What does John 17 say to us?
By Bruce Keisling July 30, 2006
Over the summer Keith Goad has been preaching for us Sunday mornings from James and leading us Wednesday evenings in a Bible study from John 17. Keith preached an excellent sermon today but ends the series without finishing the book. He’s left us at a cliff hanger. The Wednesday evening Bible study will continue in John though, and as Keith said in a recent post on this blog, there are some important questions hanging from last week’s discussion.
The primary question we were wrestling with last Wednesday was how should we engage with the culture even though we were are not to be “of” the world. My response to that question is what should we be doing? If we have been sent as Christ was sent into the world, what does that mean for us? Surely there were things that Christ did that were unique that we are not here to do. What are those things, and what are the things we should be doing? I think that part of the difficulty we have deciding how “missional” or indigenous to be comes from the complexity of deciding what we are to do as “little Christs”, what is for the church, and what was uniquely Christ’s to do? Are we to be feeding the poor, engaging in healing ministries, incarnating as Indie rockers . . . You can only answer these questions it seems by deciding what specifically we are to do as we are sent.