What's in a Name? Understanding Mission.

Thought i posted this 2 weeks ago but it stayed in draft - doh!

Whilst in Zimbabwe in the summer, my fmaily and I had a lot of fun joking about the myriad of wonderful names in Zimbabwean culture. IN fact we collected all teh names which were English language words (there were plenty in Shona too). These are some: Perfect, Pride, Precious, Princess, Blessed, Blessing, Nomore, Norest, Evernice. Some are beautiful, some have tough stories behind them. If we adopted the tradition of naming in England we'd have people called things like "Nosleep", Biglungs, Bruiser, Porker etc. If you have a nice name it brings  a new dimension to introducing yourself; on my first visit to fill up our truck with diesel (in Zim you stay in your car and an attendant does it for you) a young pretty lady strolled up to my window and said "Hi I'm Princess, how can i help you today"? I did not know what to do with myself. I thought she was coming on to me! In my dreams! But imagine introducing yourself as "Blessed" or beautiful, Strong or Handsome? If you have a good name, it's empowering. If not, it's disabling. In cultures like this, when people come to faith in Jesus, they are often given a new name - one which instead of cursing them speaks a blessing into their life.

Names are important. As a faith community we are trying to be 'missional' and describe ourselves as a 'missional church'. What do we mean by that? What does being missional mean? And is it important?

Quite simply it means to go on God's behalf and share his love with others. We are called to join God in the Missio Dei (The mission of God) which is to bring his love to all people. He didn't wait around in heaven for u to come to him, he left heaven and was born a baby so he could communicate with us. So if we become missional we begin a journey of moving towards those who don't know him yet.

It's important to understand these words as they define some key things for us as followers of Jesus. We can be evangelistic, i.e. sharing the love of God, without being truly missional because we haven't GONE anywhere to do that. Its not wrong. When people come to us, because of their hunger and searching, of course we share God's love with them too. Brilliant. But if we want to fully reflect the character of God, we need to also GO to those who will never, off their own back, have the courage to come to us. Being missional and 'going' id commonly associated with going to the other side of the world, but it can just as easily mean crossing to the other side of the room at a party, or walking across the road to a neighbour's house. How far you go is not important - who takes the initiative and the intention behind it is the key.

It's important on so many levels. If we only wait for people to come to us, we tend to only attract people like us, and so large chunks of society are untouched by the gospel, simply because 'they're different' to us. And in the process of going we are changed more deeply into God's character because going means sacrificing, risking, having more faith and more courage to venture into unknown territory. As we go, we listen more to the culture around us, hearing its hurts and cries of pain; we see more, seeing its 'needs' and 'gaps'. And by going we can demonstrate more of the love that we're trying to communicate. It is, after all, all about that; it's all about love; learning to love better.
Gav