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8001 W Capitol Drive Milwaukee, WI (414)461-2491

What's Our Mission?

 

Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

 

Well the Sermon series is coming to a close. This month we will focus throughout the entire month on what it means to be a church in mission. You will also hear me talk about being a missional church—a name that has come into use recently to talk about a particular view of how churches view their identities, purpose, and activity. My hope for us this month is that a new idea will emerge among us for what we can add to our influence for Christ. In July I challenged us to spend time praying about where God is sending us to be the Kingdom. I hope that your prayers, study, and conversations with each other has resulted in some clarity on what God is calling you to be and do in this place and at this time.

 

One of my favorite writers Wendell Berry emphasizes ‘place’ a lot in his novels about Port William. He talks about the various ways that each ‘place’ has its own history and is deeply interconnected with the rest of the world around it. People in his novels take great care to preserve and nurture their ‘places’ both respecting the past and preparing them for the future. We also have a ‘place’. It happens to be this corner and neighborhood within Milwaukee. Some of us live close and others live further away but where we live is also a ‘place’. What should we do to respect the long history of Crossroads and also follow God’s leading into the future? By the end of this August, I hope that we have a vision for how we are going to be a Bible, Born-again, Gospel, Holy, Unified, Kingdom, and Mission church for the next period of time in our history.

 

I certainly have a variety of experiences in different church congregations where missional activity was happening and I could try to recreate one of those different places here. However, this is about us doing what God has called Crossroads to do and being who God has called us to be. This means for you that I want you to share your insights from prayer and study with me and other members of this body. You can email them to me (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), call me on Fridays in the church office, drop them in my mailbox, or slip them under the office door. You should also take the opportunity to bounce your ideas off other people and see if God is speaking similar ideas to more than one of us. We will look for a time to gather for a meal and have a town-hall type of conversation about how we can extend our witness of God’s Kingdom into our ‘places’.

 

God has given each of us something to do to advance the Kingdom and it’s time for us to expand our ministry influence. Remember, our first task as the church is to witness to the truth of Jesus and his life, death, and resurrection—How can you witness to that truth today?

 

In Christ’s Peace,

 

Pastor Nathan