The Missional Life and John 17
Yesterday, Jen & I were priveleged to worship with Christ Community Church (PCA) in Franklin, TN. We enjoyed our time there and appreciated the sermon, Rev. Scotty Smith preached on a few verses out of John 17. He pointed out some things from the text I had never thought of and I wonder if it could be that I haven't taken the entire story of redemption into account when I read this passage. (the sermon audio will be at this link soon, I think)
The gist of the sermon was this: Jesus' High Priestly Prayer is missional. Disciples, as agents of redemption, are entrusted to engage the culture because we are left in the culture! We are not supposed to form our own subcultures to hide from "the world," but rather recognized that we are in this world as disciples.
He also pointed out that this prayer (mind you megachurch pastor, 3,000 every sunday) was not for our comfort or prosperity, but for our unity (among many other things) and work IN THE CULTURE we have been placed into.
This completely blew my mind. Not because I never thought of it before, because I believe Christians are to engage culture because Jesus is King and we are his representatives on this earth, but because I had not connected this prayer to the larger story of Redemption. It's quite a thing to ponder, really. We are left on this earth to engage culture and Jesus himself prayed for that. Wow.
The gist of the sermon was this: Jesus' High Priestly Prayer is missional. Disciples, as agents of redemption, are entrusted to engage the culture because we are left in the culture! We are not supposed to form our own subcultures to hide from "the world," but rather recognized that we are in this world as disciples.
He also pointed out that this prayer (mind you megachurch pastor, 3,000 every sunday) was not for our comfort or prosperity, but for our unity (among many other things) and work IN THE CULTURE we have been placed into.
This completely blew my mind. Not because I never thought of it before, because I believe Christians are to engage culture because Jesus is King and we are his representatives on this earth, but because I had not connected this prayer to the larger story of Redemption. It's quite a thing to ponder, really. We are left on this earth to engage culture and Jesus himself prayed for that. Wow.
posted by Bobby's blog at 3:46 PM
1 Comments:
Scotty Smith may be reading "the Mission of God" by Christopher Wright (or he just reads his bible better than me). I finished it (Mission of God that is) last week and have to admit that it is a book I should have read before ever showing up at seminary. I found it very helpful and highly recommend it.
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