Equpped for Service?

Ephesians 5:12

 

This is the blueprint for mission that motivates Mothers’ Union members to reach out to those around them, demonstrating Christian faith in action by the transformation of communities through the nurture of family in its many forms.

I was in Edinburgh recently for the General Meeting of the MU which attracted almost 2000 members to the Usher Hall for the day and a good many of them the evening before to St Mary’s Cathedral and St John’s Church to worship together in readiness for the gathering. It was in this year’s Report of the MU work that I read the above statement with a mixture of pride and fear that I would not be able to match up to such a mission statement!! Those are the things that members of this great mission organisation, the largest in the Anglican Communion, are doing now in every continent except Antarctica and in 83 countries. Some of us struggle to match up to the ideal but all of us do something.

But surely, many of you will be thinking, we all, all of us calling ourselves Christians, are trying to do the same. Certainly as we follow the summer sermon theme of Jesus teaching on the Mount, we are seeing, I think, the reality of the MU statements in His words. Jesus is preparing his disciples for their task. Our sermons and our House Group Studies prepare us week by week for our task here in Ashtead.

One of the most important UK based projects the MU is involved in gathers small groups together to discuss Parenting joys and sorrows. It began here in the year 2000 and has now spread around the world. Part of its success is that the groups are small, maybe 8, 10 or at the most 12. This means everyone participates. The same applies to the Literacy Circles, also started in the year 2000, in the Sudan, Burundi and Malawi.

What is the model for this sort of working? Of course it is the 12 disciples that Jesus gathered and taught. It was from them that the Christian church spread. This group was a similar size to our House Groups.

Our House Groups and each of us personally are called upon for so many things. Recently, for myself, I have felt, as my mother would have put it “as if I am meeting myself coming backwards”!! I need to learn I can’t do everything, I just can’t be involved in ALL that happens. Someone pointed out to me that this was a sort of “pride” that I should beware of. Give someone else a chance to volunteer and remember that Jesus said it is the small unnoticed acts that are important. A few more of those might bring me closer to that ideal mission!! That “blueprint”.