Mission and renewal - Rector's Rambling for October 11, 2020

 Quick question…  What is the mission of St. John’s Church?  Our Mission Statement will suffice since it is our mission.

The Vestry over the summer read and discussed a book called Made for Mission: Renewing your parish culture by Tim Glemkowski.  As recommended by this book we recommitted to being a parish that is focused on mission.  What is that mission?  Simply stated, it is To know Christ, and to make Him known.  This has been our published mission statement, and Mr. Glemkowski’s book has started us thinking about how we can become more deeply focused on the primary work of the parish.

I asked if you know our mission statement because it is vital to the identity of who we should be.  People of mission.  As Mr. Glemkowski states “The first battle we have to fight in cultural renewal will be for how those in our pews conceive of and understand the purpose of our parish” and “this is not going to be accomplished by one or two people acting alone; it must be a collective movement of committed parishioners moving in this new direction together.” (p. 63)

Last week we began distributing a booklet called Becoming a Parish Made for Mission Through the Renewal of the Church: preparing for growth through and beyond COVID-19.  It is 28 daily readings from a series of meditations given by the late Bishop Richard Emrich, bishop of Michigan from 1949 to 1973.

In this booklet Bishop Emrich lays out the focus of missionary work in the church by being committed to believing the Gospel, worship, and evangelism.  He gets to the core of the identity of the church as a missionary outpost.  And it is here that we will start our work helping to re-form how we operate as a parish focused on Jesus and bringing others to him.

The booklet is available today if you have not gotten a copy of it yet, and also now on-line at stjohnsrenewal.blogspot.com.

Take a few minutes every day to work your way through each section (it is not a long read) and pray about how God may be calling us, and you, to renewal.

As an aside – during Bishop Emrich’s tenure in our Diocese (which then included The Diocese of Michigan and The Diocese of Eastern Mission), 49 parishes and missions were started.  He took these lessons to heart.  May God grant us the momentum to also have a missionary spirit to share the gospel as we come to know Jesus better so that we can make Him known.