A new covenant

Last week, I spent time at a big church planting conference in Germany. Bishop Steven Croft of Sheffield and Bishop Graham Cray, who leads the Fresh Expressions team, were there and gave excellent and inspiring talks. (You can watch them here.)

Something Bishop Graham said and which was echoed by others stuck with me:
Christology before Missiology before Ecclesiology.

We're often very good at remembering that mission should shape church and not the other way round - we call them missional communities, after all. But sometimes we forget that actually it all starts with encountering Jesus.

When we encounter Jesus, when we really spend time getting to know him, when we delve deep into who he is, then we begin to know what he's inviting us into.

Jesus is inviting us into covenant with the living and eternal God. It happened with Noah, Abraham, Isaac, with the whole people of Israel. These stories give us a wonderful picture of what it means to be in covenant with God. But it's a new covenant in his blood that we're part of. This new covenant means that we are made one with Christ - we are hidden with him in God.

Being hidden in God means we are called into relationship with him. The three-in-one God is relationship and communion and he draws us into that. We need to spend time there, nurturing and developing the relationship.

We need to know God the Father - the Father who lovingly knit us together before we were born and who loves us tenderly and fiercely. The Father who does not wait until we fall on our knees before him but gathers up his robes and runs to meet us on the road. The Father who throws a lavish party and delights in our faltering steps towards him, even when we are still covered in the muck and stink of the pig-sty.

We need to know God the Son - the Son who holds nothing back of his inheritance but generously shares it with us. The Son who laid aside his riches and became God made flesh - who came and dwelt amongst us and was fully human and knows what it is to be tempted and to suffer and to be scorned and to be abandoned and to die. The Son who fought and fights to overcome the power of death and sin and who gives this victory to us as a gift.

We need to know God the Spirit - the Spirit who is ruach or pneuma - breath. We are in the Spirit and the Spirit is in us, like breath, like air. We cannot escape him and we cannot live without him because the Spirit is the very embodiment of God-with-us today, given to be our constant companion once Christ had left the earth. The Spirit living in us shows us that God is always there and opens our eyes and ears to see him and hear his voice, drawing us ever deeper into relationship.

Before we discover our mission call to join in God's kingdom work, before we explore what it means to be the body and bride of Christ, we must first know Him and know that we are of Him and in Him.

To finish with paraphrased words of Paul:

"May the amazing grace of Jesus Christ, the extravagant love of the Father and the intimate fellowship of the Spirit be with you all."