Living On (A) Mission

In our Identity series, we’ve highlighted mutliple times how the grand narrative of Scripture details God creating a new people to live with a new purpose as they participate in the development of a new, heavenly place to enjoy God for all eternity. We could say that there’s a King, building a kingdom, involving His Kingdom-Citizens. We’ve adapted this grand-narrative into the vision statement of Bay Cities Fellowship by claiming our vision surrounds creating celestial cities which live in contagious community.

To have any shot of experiencing our vision, we must mobilize on mission. This expansive, holistic vision needs marching orders. We must have a specific, tangible way to transform Tampa Bay. Consequently, our mission is simple:

We Exist to Reach Every Street with the Good News of Jesus Christ.

To unpack the content of this mission, will address our method, our map, and our manner for the mission. Before we address these, we need to briefly answer the following question: Where does this mission come from?

Since we believe that the Bible has one, grand storyline, the fulfillment of this story is not only intriguing but also extremely important. Since the plot involves a King, building His kingdom with His citizens, let’s quickly look at the nature of this Kingdom in its current form:

John Piper (Let the Nations Be Glad, p. 28) demonstrates that:

• Currently, there is no geographic center for [this Kingdom] (John 4:20-24), because Jesus is now the center of the Kingdom (John 2:19; Heb. 9:25-26).
• Currently, there is no [Kingdom] political regime because Christ’s kingdom is not constructed in this world yet (John 18:36).
• Currently, [the Kingdom fights] no earthly battles with chariots and horses or bombs and bullets, but spiritual ones with the word and the Sprit (Eph. 6:12-18; 2 Cor. 10:3- 5).

Consequently, the current expansion of the God’s Kingdom revolves around the name and fame of Jesus carried throughout all the nations. As a result, the good news of Jesus Christ, which has the power to save (Romans 1:16), can and will create new citizens of the Kingdom. When we embrace this mission, we participate in the prayer of Jesus by seeing creation experience life “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

Now, in light of possessing this brief synopsis, let’s first look at the method for our mission.

Our Intentional Method Of Reaching Every Street

Jesus concludes His earthly ministry with paradigmatic teaching that furthers the mission of God to bring salvation to all nations through the offspring of Eve. Matthew 28:18-20 states ¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Jesus instructs that through the means of identification (baptism) and instruction (teaching), God’s mission would be fulfilled.

Based on His acquired authority, Jesus leaves His followers with the command to make disciples. Becoming a disciple is an identity issue. Hence, through our baptisms, we identify as a follower of Jesus. We find (v. 18) that this baptism is done “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” suggesting the identity of the “Lordship of the Godhead.” As a result our new identity in God, we publicly identify with God.

So, for those who’ve externally identified with Jesus as a demonstration of your internal identity, how are you doing on this mission? This mission, to make disciples, is at the core of our Christianity. Our very existence relates to the expansion of God’s kingdom through the extension of the gospel.

The gospel of the kingdom in our conversion begins a life-long journey of transformation. Hence, not only are we told about the identity change but also we are informed about the accompanying instruction for true disciples.

Jesus commands them to teach disciples “to observe all that I have commanded you.” The breadth of this teaching reveals the depth of discipleship intended. If God was going to have a people who walked in His ways, then they better know the expectations set forth in His Word.

To experience the depth of relationship that God intends for us along with fulfilling God’s expectation for His disciples, we must take time for:

• Intimate conversations with God
  • Taking time to listen and to speak with God.
• Regular conversations with people where we live, work, and play
  • Taking time to ask thoughtful questions and then listen
• Fervently pray for the Spirit to lead
  • Set alarms on your phone/apps to pray for the Spirit to work in people’s lives and in yours.

Outside of this regular activity, most likely, we will not faithfully engage in mission. Our method for the mission involves activity the breeds identification and encourages instruction. Now, let’s take a look at our Map for the mission.

Our Strategic Map For Reaching Every Street

The paradigm for our map comes from the book of Acts. Acts serves to present how God’s mission to create a people for himself is fulfilled through obedient followers teaching all that Jesus has commanded to the ends of the world. Particularly, Jesus instructs His followers in their ambassadorial roles in Acts 1:6-8

⁶ So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” ⁷ He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. ⁸ But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Jesus instruction comes off a rather reasonable request from His followers: When will restore the Kingdom? His response to this request is fantastic. Jesus tells them first, “don’t worry about it.” Secondly, Jesus expands upon the teaching form Matthew 28 by adding a map to their method of witnessing.

Notice how Jesus identifies that this map must:

1. Begin Locally. Their witnessing was to begin right where they lived: in Jerusalem. Even though their commission included the uttermost parts of the earth, the gospel saturation Jesus had in mind began right where they were. Then, notice the expansion.
2. Expands Regionally and then Nationally. After Jerusalem, their gospel expansion focus regionally and then nationally. They are told to go in all Judea and Samaria. Once again, this expansion demonstrates natural permeation. As each follower of Jesus understands their role in the mission of God, they embrace the streets right around them. However, as promised this mission culminates in global expansion.
3. Culminate Globally. The intended goal of God’s mission is to the end of the earth. We began how there’s a King, building a kingdom, involving His Kingdom-Citizens. Look at how these verses demonstrates the expansion of God’s kingdom as seen through His kingdom glory:

• 1 Chronicles 29:11 Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all
• Isaiah 40:5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”
• Revelation 21:22-23 And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. ²³ And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.

Our hope and inspiration for this mission comes from the promises and presence of God. If we, by faith, believing fully that He will save our souls then we can fully anticipate the fulfillment of these promises. Here’s some amazing news for us: we get to participate in the expansion of God’s kingdom, one conversation, one act of love, one street at a time.

We take this strategic map seriously. Matter of fact, we are prayerfully dreaming that over the next 10 years, we would reach 500 streets. When you start to add up the amount 
of streets within this 5-mile radius, the number of streets soars to over 6,000 and the population nears 160,000. Consider your calling and our request to reach these streets with the good news of Jesus.

As important as our method and map are, finally, we must understand our manner for the mission.

Our Heavenly Manner For The Mission

Paul lays out the manner for our mission in 2 Corinthians 5:

¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. ¹⁸ All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰ Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

Since we are new creations, Paul identifies us as ambassadors: a diplomatic official of the highest rank, sent by one sovereign to another as its resident representative. We are heavenly-resident representatives where we live, work, and play. Our lives ought to represent all the riches that God has to offer His followers.

How can we live in such a manner to display our heavenly-residency?

Know Your Identity

In 2 Corinthians, Paul states how we’ve received an identity change. We are a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. More expansively, in Ephesians 2, Paul describes Christians as having been “dead in [their] trespasses and sins…following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air…carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”

However, through Jesus, we received a new identity:

“God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵ even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— ⁶ and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷ so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰ For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:4-10).

Represent Your Calling

You are to be whom God has made you to be where you live, work, and play.

2 Corinthians 5:20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.

As we just saw from Ephesians 2, we were dead and now we are created new. Our newness leads Paul to calling us “God’s workmanship”—Created by God and Created for God. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul further unveils what being God’s workmanship looks like. Paul calls us ambassadors, as we’ve already noted, but noticed what this calling is for “God making his appeal through us.”

Consider the weightiness of this: You are the instrument God us to show reconciliation to others. Your calling in this life is to represent to others what God has done through reconciling you to Him.

The Method, Map, and Manner For A Mission Possible

What seems impossible with us is possible with God. He can move mountains. His glory will cover the earth like water of the seas. We get to participate in work that He is already doing.  That’s why we say here at Bay Cities Fellowship:

 We Exist to Reach Every Street with the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Transformation in the Tampa Bay Area

Last Sunday, we learned more about our vision at Bay Cities Fellowship to experience transformation in the Tampa Bay area. Beginning in Oldsmar, we have a biblical vision of creating celestial cities where people live in contagious community. In light of this statement, we set out to answer the following questions: Where did this vision come from, how do we create celestial cities, and what is contagious community?

(Click to listen: A People of Biblical Vision)

Begins With A Biblical Vision

The grand narrative of Scripture is that God is creating a new people to live with a new purpose as they participate in the development of a new, heavenly place to enjoy God for all eternity. When you pick up your Bible, you are holding a cohesive story. One that is filled with drama, wisdom, commands, problems, and solutions. Ultimately, the central character, Jesus, and his plan shapes the entire framework of the story. In Hebrews 11, much of the Bible’s narrative is recalled and we are able to get a glimpse of this vision for transformation. We learn in Hebrews 11:8-10 that ⁸ By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. ⁹ By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. ¹⁰ For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. 

Based on this text, let’s take a moment and ponder the following question: What a city would look like—relationally, economically, educationally, geographically, religiously—that possessed God as the “designer and builder?” We begin to see an answer to this question in Revelation 21:1-4—Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. ² And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. ³ And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. ⁴ He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Our biblical vision is a reality that God has already created. Hence, we have an opportunity now to live in such a way that the world around us can acquire a taste for something they don’t have but desperately need. This opportunity for transformation prompts us to look at our second question: how do we create celestial cities? 

To Create Celestial Cities

Creating celestial cities revolves around these five actions (adapted from “The Church in the Mission of God” by Bruce Ashford in The Community of Jesus):

1. Enjoying God (Psalm 63:1; 1 Corinthians 2:7-10)
2. Loving Other Believers (Acts 2:42-47)
3. Recognizing Our Purpose (Genesis 1:28-31, 3:23)
4. Longing For God’s Kingdom (Colossians 1:20; Ephesians 1:10)
5. Reaching Other People (Matthew 28:18-20; Revelation 5:9-14)

When God’s people draw on the entirety of themselves (spiritually, morally, creatively, relationally, physically) they can be instruments and signs of his reconciliation. Also, as the church brings all of life into submission to Christ’s lordship, she points simultaneously back to God’s design in creation and forward to the consummated kingdom (Ashford, The Community of Jesus, p. 258). 

Ultimately, our vision leads to a city where followers of Jesus live in such a unique, attractive way that the world around can’t help but notice.

Living In Contagious Community

We learn about the elements of this community in Acts 2:42-47—⁴² And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. ⁴³ And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. ⁴⁴ And all who believed were together and had all things in common. ⁴⁵ And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. ⁴⁶ And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Simply, allow me to highlight the following:

By devoting ourselves to…

• God’s Word—“to the apostles’ teaching” (42,46)
• Giving—“And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need” (42,45,46)
• Worshipping—“to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (42,46)
• Being Together—“And all who believed were together and had all things in common” (42,46)

We can experience…

• God’ Blessing—”And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles” (43)
• Unity—”And all who believed were together and had all things in common” (44)
• God’s Favor—”praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (47)

This descriptive passage provides hope and inspiration for us to set our trajectories on arriving at this attractive conclusion.

Where We Live, Work, and Play

For transformation in Tampa Bay area to occur, we must transfer this good news into neighborhoods, places of work and recreation. Our lifestyle of going with the gospel will bring light into dark places. Every believer, embracing this biblical vision, can rely on the promise of Jesus and the presence of the Spirit to empower their pursuit of making this heavenly dream an earthly reality.