God is always at work rebuilding shalom. He is healing the sick. He is feeding the hungry. He's bringing Comfort to the lonely. He is caring for the Foreigner. He is freeing prisoners. He is soothing the pains and the scars that life in a broken world brings to the people in it. God's mission is not merely a conceptual one. It's not merely theoretical. It's not merely a new philosophy to be discussed and debated in the halls of the learned, and those with the luxury of time and energy that think about and discuss such things. God's mission is a hands-on felt need, tangible dirt under your fingernail’s kind of mission. Where he is addressing not just the spiritual damage that sin has done, but the physical and emotional damage as well. And we have the opportunity to join with him to address those needs as an extension of Jesus's presence here on earth. Jesus himself invites us and reminds us that whatever we do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of his, we are doing it for him as Matthew 25 reminds us. So, we engage in a lot of what we call around here, shalom building opportunities, where we are working to promote this universal flourishing.
"God's plan is really simple. God's plan is to form a people, a community. And through that community's transformation, through that community's life together, through that community's Christlikeness (both at an individual level and at the communal level)—God's Plan A is to use that community to show other people who God is and what life can be like in His Kingdom with Him. That's the plan."
Rather than share a message on the topic of Mission, Pastor Mike Lueken interviews four sets of people who are living out mission in their lives:
• Caryn & Shawn Young (Mission in the neighborhood)
• Selina Zavala (Mission in the workplace)
• Cas Mastropaolo, Caelin Linden, and Greg Roeszler of The Playmakers (Mission with our Ministry Partners)
• Neena Conrad, Oak Hills Missions Coordinator (Mission as a community)