In 2018-2019 Covenant Church entered a prayer filled process to discern what God was saying regarding His mission for us as a church. We knew it would be Biblically sound, easy to remember, and applicable for our local community! We believe that God answered our prayers and we now see that we are a church “called out by God to be sent with one another into the world.”
There are many places in the Scripture to see this mission drawn out, but the three that we mostly focussed on were the following:
Genesis 12 – God clearly calls Abraham out as His chosen man to lead His chosen people for a chosen purpose … to occupy a chosen land! Abraham was called out to be sent to settle into a land that God had determined for Him. Likewise we know that God has a chosen mission for us and that as much as our identity is in being His chosen people, that we have been chosen to accomplish a specific mission … that we also have been called out to be sent.
Matthew 28:16-20 – As Jesus prepares to ascend in to heaven He gives this last command to His people … Go and make disciples! As much as we can see that we have been called by the authority of Jesus in this passage we cannot miss that we are called to be sent with the purpose of making disciples who make disciples. Again Jesus has called us out to be sent, and in this passage we know that we have been sent to all the nations. To us at Covenant Church, this means that God has called us to reach the world in our neighborhood as well as the world of other nations. He has called us out to go across the street as well as across the globe!
The Apostle Paul – The letters, as well as the life, of the Apostle Paul are filled with evidence of being called out to be sent! Just the picture of Paul and Barnabas kneeling at Antioch as they are prayed over as the called out to be sent is filled with power! But one of the things that we see in the Apostle Paul more than anywhere else is the need for the “one another”. This business of being called out to be sent is not to be done alone. It is to be done in the context of the church and as the church we are to do it together. We are called out by God to be sent WITH ONE ANOTHER into the world.
At Covenant Church we know that every member has been called by God …
to receive His love, to embrace His grace, to know His mercy! But we are not to enjoy those things as an end, but a means to the end of therefore being sent. Being sent to our neighborhood, being sent to our city, being sent around the world … that we might as one body be used to proclaim His love, grace, and mercy to a world that desperately needs to know Him!