Living Out the Implications

Excerpt from Ed Stetzer post:  Releasing the Missional Manifesto
  

Today, I want to point you to a newly released Missional Manifesto.

You can find the full document here. Our purpose is to encourage and bring clarity-- to encourage believers to live missional lives and to clarify what we mean when we use the term "missional."

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But, the primary focus is on the affirmations. It is our hope that these affirmations will encourage us toward biblical fidelity and missional engagement. Here are some excerpts from those affirmations:

We affirm that God, who is more holy that we can imagine, looked with compassion upon humanity made up of people who are more sinful that we will admit and sent Jesus into history to establish His kingdom and reconcile people and the world to Himself. Jesus, whose love is more extravagant than we can measure, gave His life as a substitutionary death on the cross and was physically resurrected thereby propitiating the wrath of God. Through the grace of God, when a person repents of their sin, confesses the Messiah as Lord, and believes in His resurrection, they gain what the Bible defines as new and eternal life. All believers are then joined together into the church, a covenant community working as "agents of reconciliation" to proclaim and live out the gospel.

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We believe the mission and responsibility of the church includes both the proclamation of the Gospel and its demonstration. From Jesus, we learn the truth is to be proclaimed with authority and lived with grace. The church must constantly evangelize, respond lovingly to human needs, as well as "seek the welfare of the city" (Jeremiah 29:7). By living out the implications of the gospel, the missional church offers a verbal defense and a living example of its power.

It is also a manifesto -- it calls us toward action. Our hope is that it might help Christians, churches, and denominations to press toward missional activity in the world. The last paragraph hits on this important part:

Because we believe these things, we are compelled to action. We urge God's people to align around the lordship of Jesus, the missional nature of His church, and the reality of His kingdom. We invite the body of Christ everywhere to see people and the world through the lens of God's kingdom, to live holy lives as Jesus' disciples, and to intentionally represent Him together as the church. We affirm that Jesus was sent to fulfill God's purposes in the world through His perfect life, substitutionary death, and physical resurrection so that redemption could be made available to us. With Christ as our focal point, His kingdom as our destiny, and His Spirit as our empowerment, we accept the privilege and joy of His mission.