It's a game of two halves

Mission that is. Although you only had to watch Liverpool and AC Milan’s Champion League final earlier this year to see that football can really be a game of two halves. (Who did say that anyway?) Here’s hoping Everton’s second ‘half’ with Villareal is better than their first!

Anyway, I reckon that the mysterium that is mission is also a game of (at least) two halves. Similarly, I find myself agreeing with Robert Lewis who wrote:

‘If spiritual maturity is defined in terms of living the life and serving the world, then most evangelical churches are, at best, investing in only the first half of the battle.’ (Lewis, 2001:94) The Church of Irresistible Influence

How do we avoid the spiritual immaturity that results from an emmaciated one-dimensional missional focus? As Lewis himself says ‘we seek to enlarge the concept of what ministry means’. It seems to me that as we wrestle to embody the fullness of the cross amidst our world of dire need the expanded concept of ministry which Lewis urges is inevitable.

As the once comfortable borders of the church explode, the limits for the work of the church are practically endless. With the inadequacy of tidy cliched defintions of mission writ large what matters now seems simple: good works that display the love of Christ.