The Gift of Family
This is my first blog post since coming on staff at New City. I am honored to serve our church as the Director of Community and Connection. I am so grateful to be a part of a local church with a strong desire to live as a family of missionary servants.
Last night we began MC Leaders Training. It was a great time of fellowship and discussion. I was grateful to spend the evening with 9 people who desire to lead in seeing our city filled with Missional Communities. It’s incredible to think about more and more neighborhoods in our city witnessing a group of believers living as family who bear witness to Jesus and the transforming power of the gospel in word and deed.
God has blessed us with such a high calling in Christ. Peter reminds us in 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” When I stop and truly meditate on that verse it reminds me that everything I have in Christ is an incredible and undeserved gift. That the God of the universe would send His Son for us, rescue us from Satan, sin, and death, welcome us into His family, and send us out as messengers to proclaim His goodness and glory should overwhelm us.
It’s easy to lose sight of the grace that God has richly given us in Christ. We are daily engaged in spiritual warfare and our great enemies, the world, the flesh, and the Devil relentlessly seek to take our eyes off Christ and rob us of the joy we have in him. Our culture daily bombards us with the message that happiness and freedom are found in hyper-individualism and being able to do whatever we want. Thankfully, God has provided us with each other. This is not a burden; it is a gift. We have the opportunity to live as brothers and sisters in Christ. We get to live and proclaim the gospel as family.
I am excited to serve and encourage you as we live out our identity as a family of missionary servants together. I encourage you to spend some time thinking and dreaming about what it could look like to embrace this calling more and more in all of life. It’s so comforting to know that we don’t do it alone. We are children of the Father, united to the Son, and filled with the Spirit. We have also been invited into a family of brothers and sisters who speak grace and truth and bear one another’s burdens. Living as members of God’s family is something we get to do.