LIFE ON MISSION

This is my Prayer Circle.

I’ve used this template for so long that I can’t remember where I first found it, but I know I’ve been using it for more than ten years.

I find it hard to focus sometimes. My head is full of crazy monkeys, and I need things that help me remember what matters. One of the things I need reminding of most is one of the key reasons God put me here:

To share His love with everyone.

The Prayer Circle helps me do that.

There are three circles.

The outer circle is Communities. This is where I put neighbours, new friends and people in my world whom God lays on my heart. These are the people I’m beginning to notice, get to know and build relationships with.

As those relationships develop, people gradually move into my Friends circle.

This is where things become more personal. We hear each other’s stories. We learn about one another. We appreciate each other. And somewhere in the midst of those conversations, we begin to sense where and how God might want us to speak to them about His calling on their lives.

Finally, as people come to faith in Christ, they move into the centre circle.

And that's not the end of the journey. It's the beginning of discipleship—helping one another grow in our faith and discover what it means to live a life on mission.

Jesus said:

“Go into all the world and preach the good news, making disciples, baptizing them, teaching them to obey what you have heard from me.”— Matthew 28

For more than a decade, Ann and I, along with a few friends, have tried to live by what we describe as an ecclesial minimum: worship, community and mission.

It takes intentionality.

It also takes an understanding that community and mission only really work in tandem with worship.

Community without worship can become little more than a social club. Mission without worship can become a social justice cause where, ultimately, all the credit goes to us.

Worship reminds us that this isn't our mission.

It's His.

Life AND Mission, Life OR Mission, Life ON Mission

I was recently asked to communicate some of this to a group of microchurch and Neighbourhood Gathering leaders.

I'm not sure I succeeded!

But what I was trying to communicate was something that has become increasingly important to Ann and me:

Mission is not simply, or exclusively, an event on the church calendar. Mission is a lifestyle.

Over the years, our journey has moved from:

Life AND Mission = Burnout

Life OR Mission = Frustration

Life ON Mission = Calling

I've found that when I think of mission as something I have to add to my life, it can become exhausting.

Life is happening—and then there is mission.

There are the normal things: work, shopping, family, appointments, neighbours, chores, conversations, interruptions. And then, somewhere in the middle of all that, I try to fit in “mission.”

That's Life AND Mission.

And if I start thinking that I have to choose between ordinary life and mission, I end up with

Life OR Mission.

But what if I don't have to choose?

What if mission is already woven into the ordinary stuff of life?

That's Life ON Mission.

Mission in the Ordinary

I think mission is often found in the perceived tedium of daily life—the things we regard as the unenjoyable or necessary stuff.

Grocery shopping.

Sitting in the DMV, seething with frustration.

Sitting in the doctor's office waiting for test results.

Mowing the front lawn.

None of these things particularly sound like mission.

And yet, these are the places where people are.

When we were pastoring a church in London, we had to paint the outside of the building.

It wasn't a Saturday outreach event.

There was no programme.

No carefully planned strategy.

We were simply painting a building.

And yet we had more meaningful conversations with people while painting that building than we did at some of our organised Saturday outreach events.

People stopped.

They talked.

We listened.

Relationships began.

It reminded me that sometimes the most significant opportunities for mission aren't the ones we organise. They're the ones we notice.

Seeing People Differently

There is something that happens when we begin to live Life ON Mission.

The people around us start to look different.

The chatty neighbour is no longer an interruption.

The bored barista isn't simply someone serving our coffee.

The senior in front of us at the cash register isn't just someone making the queue move more slowly.

They become people.

People with stories.

People made in the image of God.

People whom God may already be drawing towards Himself.

And suddenly the ordinary moments of life become valuable and beautiful rather than irritating interruptions.

That has been one of the most amazing things for me about learning to live Life ON Mission.

There is a passionate sense of purpose in it.

Not the pressure of constantly having to do something for God.

Not the exhaustion of trying to fit mission into an already full life.

Simply the awareness that wherever I am, whoever I am with, God is already there—and perhaps He wants me to notice.

That's a very different way to live.

Life AND Mission leads to burnout.

Life OR Mission leads to frustration.

But Life ON Mission feels like calling.

And perhaps the invitation is simpler than we sometimes make it.

Go into all the world and share...

Maybe “all the world” begins with the people already in ours.