The Wheatland Mission

"a learning community of practicing disciples...

I want to take a moment and express my thanks to all of you who have shared your opinions and concerns with me regarding the big decisions our church needs to make regarding our meeting time and meeting place. Without an exception the information provided to me has been helpful and very graciously offered. Please continue to pray and please continue to share your thoughts and feelings about these issues with me and, I might add, with one another. There is much we learn together. As we work together in community God reveals things to us that he might not simply reveal to us as individuals. This is one beautiful thing about being a "body of believers" as Paul describes in I Corinthians 11-14. There is much I learn from you and much you learn from one another. Keep it up.

I entitled this post "a learning community of practicing disciples...". This is a quote from Brian McLaren's book The Secret Message of Jesus and one which I have mentioned before. I include it here to remind us that regardless of when we meet or where, we have a commission from Christ to follow him. We are to follow him regardless of our context or circumstance. We are to be "practicing disciples". This is a bit overstated but I believe it needs to be. In the church this word has been overused and unfortunately misused. It has grown to mean less and less over the years. What I want us to pay attention to is the idea of us being "practicing" disciples. That is, we are students, or apprentices, of Christ by actually doing what he says. We take his commands seriously and actually believe that he will empower us, through his Holy Spirit, to become more and more like him as we grow and mature. The end result will be that we will find it harder not to do the things Jesus would do than it is to do them. This is an admirable goal and I believe it is God's will for each of our lives.


The image above is the Orthodox icon known as Christ the Teacher.

In addition, we are to do this as we grow and learn together. We are to be a "learning community". To be in Christ requires that we continue to learn and are committed to it. I seriously question whether we can be disciples of Christ if we are not committed to being learners. We don't learn mere facts about the Bible but we learn for the sake of being formed more and more into the likeness of Jesus. (Galatians 4:19)

So, to be a "learning community of practicing disciples" does not require a specific building or facility but a specific outlook. A missional outlook that sees the church as part of God's solution to the world's problems initiated through Christ and his Kingdom. We get to participate in the Kingdom of God in many ways not the least of which includes fashioning our lives to more closely resemble his. Wherever that takes us is where I want to be. That is where I want the Wheatland Mission to be.

posted by The Wheatland Mission @ 9:45 PM