Real Lasting Life
About this blog
Ray Jones is the Coordinator for Evangelism for the Presbyterian Church (USA). He has served the church as a pastor for twenty-five years. He has a heart for helping people grow in the love of God in Jesus Christ. This growth always includes our words and deeds. He is married and has two grown daughters. He has experienced training and education at Furman University, Columbia Theological Seminary, the church, and through living in the world.
Recent posts
- The Engine of the Church
- My Witnesses
- Witnessing Communities
- The Ministry of Making Disciples
- A New Creation
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As I continue to grow as a follower of Jesus, I rethink much of the way in which I was trained for ministry. I’ve experienced training in sharing faith. But if I’m not in relationships with people outside the church, I have no context in which to share. I’ve learned the importance of casting a compelling vision, but I did not learn so much about developing a community in which the life we live in Jesus is the essence of our attraction. I learned the significance of a ministry bathed in justice and mercy, but that mission was not connected to a close walk with Jesus.
What if ministry boils down to engaging, sharing, and living the good news of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus? And then what would life look like for us if that good news shaped and informed all areas of our lives? In other words, instead of the faith being an important part of our lives, what if it defined everything about us?
A part of me actually believes that we have taken something that is very simple and life changing and turned it into a complicated system of beliefs. The faith has become something we can hold, but it does not hold us. We pick it up when we need it, but we don’t allow the faith to change and reform us. We pick it up when we protect what we believe to be true, but we don’t want the good news to break us so that we love even our enemies. As a result of my rethinking the way in which I’ve been trained for ministry, I am convinced that we need to engage three main areas of what it means to follow Jesus.
The first area is the Gospel. What does it mean to us that we were created for a good purpose of loving God and others, but we decided we’d rather be God than love God? The good news is that God does not leave us in our sin and brokenness. In Jesus we see God’s nature and we experience our lives as they are to be lived. But we also experience forgiveness and are given the purpose of joining God in God’s mission to heal the world. The healed become the agents of God’s redemptive mission for all people and creation. The brokenness of creation is on a journey of being restored.
Here’s the thing: we do not spend enough time in our churches helping one another dig through scripture and encounter God’s big story of love and rescue in the words of the Bible. And we do not help one another claim and enter into our own stories of redemption and deliverance. Each one of us has a story of how our lives have been changed by God’s love in Jesus. And each of our stories is contained in God’s big story of love.
The second area is mission. Healed people have a mission: we are the agents of God’s love in the world. We are called to invest ourselves in our neighborhoods, work, and communities. So, what do we do? We take a step of faith into the lives of others. Who are the people in our neighborhood? Pray for them. Get to know them. Have meals with them. Introduce them to people on the journey with Jesus. Invite them to serve with you. Allow the Holy Spirit to open their hearts and your heart to what God is doing in their lives and yours.
When we are on mission, we have the words to tell people about why we are working for justice in our communities. As we work to end racism, poverty, and homelessness, we bear witness to the resurrection of Jesus. In our lives and words, people experience the power of new life.
The third area is community. In our worship, fellowship, prayer, and time with scripture, we are being equipped and nurtured for a very different way of life. This way of life will not always lead to larger budgets and membership. We will not always have success in the way the world sees success, but lives will be touched and changed. Our lives will have lasting meaning.
Sometimes I wonder if we’re open to living Jesus’ life. For much of his life he lived in obscurity. We don’t know much about the first thirty years of his life, but they had to be foundational for launching his three-year mission to advance God’s reign. One of the questions I ask myself is if I’m willing to spend the time investing in the lives of the people in my neighborhood? Am I willing to invest my life in the people around me who are following Jesus? What if this journey is as simple as loving God and people enough to invite them into what we enjoy doing?
- Posted at 4:11 p.m.
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