Our job is to make goodness fashionable. It doesn’t matter if someone’s life is ruined, degraded, or wrecked beyond comprehension, as God’s ambassadors we connect the world with the goodness of God in such a way that anyone has the potential to become a new creation. Then God will make of others what he is making of us: people unlike the world has ever seen.
When followers of Christ become God’s visual aid in the earth, they show others what heaven is really like. Missional is a code word for people who have learned to think properly about the kingdom of God. God calls them: “My Body,” and Christ’s Body is supposed to be distinguishable from all other bodies.
The church should understand itself as a redeemed community in a reconciled society. We see all created things as having the possibility of reconciliation with the Father. We reject the term “non-believer,” because everyone believes something. And what we believe about God is the most important thought we will ever have. What we need to call people who have yet to believe is “pre-Christian.” This helps us view them with potential to become part of the body, because the Father is not willing that any should perish. Everyone is part way there in terms of being reconciled since Jesus died once for all.
“For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again… Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” ~2 Corinthians 5
God is not holding people’s transgressions against them (he is not like some evangelicals I know). The reason God’s not holding anything against anyone is because Jesus died once and for all. Therefore, since all are reconciled the way is open for all who will to come and stand before God and receive redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ.
In the body, we build the society of heaven where it’s safe for people to discover who they are: where they realize their dreams and learn to be more than they ever thought possible. As Christ’s Body we show the world what heaven is like and connect real people with God’s goodness and majesty. We make goodness fashionable. Ladies and gentlemen this is the church; anything else would not be the church.
(Sources: William Wilberforce; Graham Cooke)
Brian L Powell 