February 2, 2014
My teaching today will be the first in a series during which we will hear from a member of each of our current 8th Day Mission Groups. I will define what we mean by Mission Groups in 8th Day and at the Church of the Saviour and tell you about their structure and the way they operate. How the Call arises to start or join or join or explore a Mission. I’ll use my own Mission Group, the Family Support Mission Group to illustrate. Much of what I’ll say you can find on the 8th Day website or in the Handbook for Mission Groups written by Gordon Cosby and Elizabeth O’Connor several decades ago.
I want to recognize that, besides Mission Groups, there are other active groups in our communities, some formed to carry out specific tasks, such as the Potter’s House Project Team, or spiritual support groups. We also have classes and workshops sponsored by our several church communities and the Servant Leadership School at the Festival Center.
Many people who are attracted to 8th Day are engaged in Mission vocations. They work in community organizations or peace and justice ministries or they are raising their small children, or they are Disciples Year volunteers, or they have sought out other ways to serve God and their neighbors. 8th Day wholeheartedly supports these pathways.
However, Mission Groups are the structure we have found most helpful in supporting God's individual and corporate call in 8th Day. They are the central structure in which we work out our Call as people of God and it is through Mission Groups that we become Covenant or Intern Members of 8th Day.
Mission Group members engage together in carrying out the Call of the Mission Group which is an expression of what the church calls “Outward Journey.” The Call may be to serve struggling families, or accompany survivors of torture, or to provide opportunities for study and spiritual growth within the church community and beyond.
All covenant and intern members of 8th Day belong to a Mission Group. Community members also can participate as explorers or task force members. It is in the Mission Group that members ‘commitment to Christ and response to God's call is deepened through accountability to the disciplines of our church and practices of our inward and outward journey.
Mission groups consist of at least two covenant members who have responded to a particular call to ministry. They generally meet once a week for 2 - 3 hours, broken into periods of worship, personal sharing, study, and work on the mission.
My group, for example, studies issues related to child development, family stress, racism and poverty, and ways to support children and families. We talk about how to further our mission programs. We move into close relationships during our meetings and in the context of our mission. We pray for the missions.
Some Mission Groups consist of just 8th Day members, and others, like the Racial Justice and Healing Mission Group and my own Mission Group for Family Support, draw participation from several C of S communities. Mission groups support one another in spiritual growth and outward mission. We are accountable in our group for the commitments we have made to church membership, and, as well, active participation in our mission activities.
Mission Groups vary widely and the focus of the mission may vary over time. My Family Support Mission Group is now 35 years old. It began in 1980 with my Call and the response of two other members to low-income pregnant women and disadvantaged families with young children. A few years later Family Place Mission broadened our call when we became part of the Sanctuary movement, giving supports and services to undocumented immigrants. In 2008 Family Place joined Joe Collier’s call to form a child care center, Jubilee JumpStart, in Jubilee Housing, and we are also engaged with the Sitar Center for the Arts through Sam Miller and my volunteer service at Sitar. Joe is co-pastor of Friends of Jesus Church, and Sam was part of Potter’s House Church. Our Mission Group now is exploring ways of developing a coordinated family support program with Jubilee Housing Youth Services, and, I hope, we will soon be ready to issue a renewed call to this work.
Family Place, Sitar and Jubilee JumpStart have grown. They have many programs, Boards of Directors, paid staff, and big budgets. But the Mission Group’s tenacious persistence in our daily prayer for the Missions and the many ways we contribute, whether as Board members, or volunteers, or fundraisers remain vital to our vision of helping children develop to their fullest God-given potential in safe, strong, nurturing families and communities.
Some of our associated ministries like FLOC, L’Arche, Joseph’s House, and Academy of Hope had their origins in Mission Groups which now have been replaced by Boards of Directors although church members are often actively involved as staff or volunteers.
Other 8th Day Missions, such as Banyan Tree and the new Creation Mission, carry out their mission entirely within the context of our 8th Day community.
The common factor is that all arise out of a call heard by one person and shared by at least one other person to follow Jesus in some particular manifestation of the outward journey.
So how do you join a Mission Group? We usually ask that people first take two courses in the School of Christian Living before they commit to the considerable time, effort, and accountability required of a Mission Group Member.
As you listen to teaching from each Mission Group over the next month or two, you may find one of them tugging on your heart and wonder, or know, that you are being called. If so, speak to a Mission group member about possible next steps.
You also may be feeling a Call to something brand new! Pray about it. Take some classes in the School of Christian Living. Talk to community members. Call may be heard in many unique ways: in a class in the School of Christian Living; through a disruption in one’s life – a death, a birth, a divorce; or through some ordinary event of that stirs our heart or wakes us up to a need; seeing or reading about the homeless, realizing that children are hungry and neglected, becoming alive to the community’s need for study and retreat.
You may also have to deal with barriers to your call. Other claims on our time, energy, and money are strong. It’s easy to feel that the problems of the world and the city are too big for the little that, realistically speaking, we can accomplish. (I believe it was Gordon who said, “If you are confident you will succeed, it’s not call!”) Then too, missions and missionaries in some circles have a really bad name, and deservedly so. To get the goodies missionaries hand out in their soup kitchens, you have to sign on to their theology. Even worse, missionaries have worked hand in glove with imperialists and colonizers. Missionaries have been complicit in destroying indigenous language and culture.
Well, if God is calling you to be on mission, you’ll just have to work with these problems. Most people in this room are Christians, but, as you know, Christians don’t necessarily have a good reputation. Christians are called arrogant, hypocritical, judgmental, passé, and naïve. Deal with it. Tell your own story. Listen to the stories of people’s longing for the beloved community. Be patient with yourself. Value your questioning. Read again what that great missionary, Paul, said in our lectionary epistle for today, I Cor 1: “No place is left for human pride in the presence of God.” The bush will burn.
Our current 8th Day mission groups, in addition to the Family Support Group, include:
BANYAN TREE - creates, provides and coordinates learning and study opportunities for the 8th Day Faith community.
COMPANIONS - committed to seeking out and making friends with low-income persons.
NEW CREATION - create and teach creativity as a sign of God's creativity in the world, through original music, arts and workshops.
RACIAL JUSTICE & HEALING - members from several different faith communities working together to promote justice and bridge the racial divide.
INTERFAITH TRAUMA HEALING - focuses on fighting the structures in our families, society, country and world that allow the perpetuation of traumatizing events on children and adults. This group also develops trauma healing groups with foci on spirituality, development of individual and community strengths, community building, empowerment, and call.
When we become a person in mission with others responding to the same call, we learn to listen deeply and attentively to each person. We recognize our own and each other’s gifts. We surrender something of our own fixed ideas and authority to bring into existence a new community. We become more willing to be accountable to others in the group for our personal disciplines and for participation in the shared vision. We share our lives.
The call to move out deepens– We discover where we are to lay down our lives, become the suffering servant, and bear witness to the power of God in Christ.
In Matthew 5, in the beatitudes, Jesus is telling us how to be people who can truly spread the Gospel. He blesses the gentle, the merciful, the humble, the pure, the peacemakers, and those who hunger after righteousness.
Then he says to his followers:
“You are light for all the world. Like a lighted lamp, you must shed light among your fellows so that when they see the good you do, they will give praise to your Father in heaven.”
God puts a very big question to us in another of today’s lectionary scriptures:
“What do I require of you, O Human?”
And God himself answers: “Do Justice, Love mercy, and walk humbly before God.”
Our earnest prayer is to carry out this command as best we can within our Mission Groups.