As an association of congregations, I love our name: Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ. It brilliantly captures our aspirations: a network of autonomous congregations united by a Lutheran theological foundation and a common commitment to a greater mission for Jesus Christ in the world!
We recognize four core values that shape our association. We are 1) Free in Christ, 2) Accountable to One Another, 3) Rooted in the Scriptures and Lutheran Confessions, and 4) Working Together to Fulfill Christ Great Commission to Go and Make Disciples of All Nations. While all values are important, it is the fourth one that defines our purpose… our mission.
Yet as I survey our congregations, this fourth value is far less obvious. If you were to ask someone to observe our member congregations and describe our association based on what our churches are doing and how they are spending time and resources, I doubt that our mission to go make disciples of all nations would be noted as our clear and obvious purpose.
This realization has grown clearer to me in recent months. I came across an LCMC congregation’s website that publicly claims the first three of our association’s core values while completely omitting any mention of the fourth! Additionally, during a meeting of LCMC pastors, a colleague stated that a Lutheran understanding of mission is simply the proper proclamation of the gospel and administration of the sacraments. I respectfully challenged this notion, expressing that although fulfilling the Great Commission includes proper gospel proclamation and sacrament administration, these actions alone do not equate to going and making disciples of all nations. We need to take Jesus’ words in Matthew 28 seriously.
I lament that, in an association that professes the centrality of our mission for Christ in its name and beautifully articulates how we are working together to carryout Christ’s Great Commission as the fulfillment of this mission, mission may be little more than a middle name to us!
So, I ask you, pastors and churches: what does your church’s mission look like? If an unbiased observer were to spend time within your community to draft a report describing who you are as a church and what your church is about, what would it say? How is your church working together to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission to go make disciples of all nations?
This, my friends, is our mission… our purpose. I pray that we don’t forget it, dumb it down, or drop it off the list. Mission is more than our middle name!
