We know how to ‘do church’ but we have not yet learned, perhaps, how to ‘do mission’ – I mean, mission here at home, here in our own contexts with our own neighbours and realities. We know about running churches, about ‘church work’ – but we have forgotten what it means to be the People of God on mission,  to be The Church.

 

Perhaps some cases, we’ve almost run local churches into the ground. Folk are out of stream, out of creativity and fresh ideas' they've run out of people (or run people out).

 

Do we know how to be missionaries? - for indeed we must discover or rediscover the missional impulse and enterprise for which Christ forth and builds His Church.  

 

There is a difference between ‘church work’ and the work of the church which. The latter has to do with what happens when the Holy Spirit flows in and through us. When that happens – we can’t get enough of ministry. Oh, we get tired, yes – but it’s different somehow, not as exhausting or trying as 'church work.'

 A lot of things we once took for granted and did as a matter of course in ‘normal’ church life and ministry, now seems no longer to work, to be fruitful and effective. Working faster, better, harder, doing more of the same doesn’t seem to ‘cut it.’

 

We remember the definition of insanity - of doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome. Hmmm.