What is Mission?

Have you noticed its ‘Mission Sunday’ again? If you are like me you probably find the sudden arrival of several almost strangers talking about their particular brand of full-time Christian work a bit of an interruption. After all, doesn’t the Church do enough without supporting all these outside organisations?

Actually, it is important that we are reminded that God’s work isn’t just St. Giles/George, and that real flesh and blood people have chosen to give their time, their life and sometimes changed their country in order to undertake work they believe God is calling them to.

In some cases the people have actually come from our own church – and are following a mission the Church is unable to undertake, either because it is far away, or very different from what we are able to do. Sometimes it is quite a while since the people we support were part of our church – but that doesn’t change the fact that they learnt to love Jesus more with us and are now giving themselves, and any potential high salary by working for Him in their fulltime capacities. We have the opportunity to be part of what they are doing by supporting them – isn’t that exciting?

We may also support missions that take on a specific role – like Wheels for the World, who provide wheelchairs to people who otherwise wouldn’t have one, and sometimes our own members get the chance to find out what it is like to be part of that, as Alexa and Stephanie Elstub have found out this year – isn’t that good too?

A major part of our Mission interest, though, is in supporting those missions or churches that are much poorer than we are.   It may be that you feel with the recession squeeze we are all currently experiencing that you are ‘poor’ – but this does not compare with some of the groups we are reaching out to both at home and abroad! We support Zion Harvest Mission – a whole Church group in Kenya where most members live below the poverty line even for Kenya! We support Liquid Connection where workers reach out to young people and adults in North Leatherhead – where there is a high unemployment level, low self esteem and poverty right on our doorstep. We have links with Christchurch Spitalfields which is sited in one of the poorest areas of London, we support workers with Interserve who are working with Sudanese refugees – who are Christians but have nothing – and they are working to make them more self-sufficient. We support the work of ALDAG within our own church – supporting those who are intellectually rather than materially poor. We are supporting Mike and Helen Francis as they reach out to immigrant Nepalese communities in Farnborough – members of our own church who left to work amongst these needy people just down the road. Even in Ashtead we support a detached youthworker through Ashtead Churches Together working amongst our more aimless young people in the village......and this is only a taste of what we are doing!

That is why we have Mission Sunday – to remind us that as a Church it isn’t all about who we are and what we do, it is about what God can do through us, and through our sacrificial giving.