A Place at the Table: Finding our mission field

One of the e-mails that has been regularly showing up in my in-box is a mailing from the Texas Methodist Foundation called A Place at the Table. The site describes itself as “an online quarterly journal  . . . that seeks to nurture a critical and reflective understanding of challenges facing the United Methodist Church by engaging dialogue amongst those seeking a faithful part in God’s hope for the future.” The site features articles by a variety of church leaders on thinking about ministry in missional terms.

The post I received today featured Gil Rendle (who has been a consultant for the Nashville Episcopal Area) on “Finding Our Mission Field.” Gil writes:

“So, tell me, what is a mission field?”  This seems to be an increasingly frequent question among church leaders who are being told that their purpose is to serve their mission field rather than the institutional needs of their congregation or denomination.The redirection of our attention from the institution of the church to the mission field is one of the best changes that we have wrestled with for some time. However, if we are to turn our attention to the mission field – then the next question quite reasonably is: OK, so what is our mission field?  Every good answer prompts another better question. And it’s the better questions that are always the hard ones to answer.

I encourage all to click here to read Gil’s full article, as well as some of the other articles by Elaine Heath, Lorenza Andrade Smith, and Mike Baughman. These leaders are helping to paint a new vision for the church that will better lead us to make disciples who are engaged in transforming the world.