Author: Andy Bender, Wesley Memorial Lay Leader
Several weeks ago, as we began to discuss the work of our Affiliation Task Force, Chris Rouse asked me why I thought Wesley Memorial existed. This question, “Why does Wesley Memorial exist?”, is another way of asking, “What is our mission?”
In answer to this question, I believe Wesley Memorial exists to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ! Mark’s gospel tells us that Jesus, ‘came into Galilee, announcing God’s good news, saying, “Now is the time. God’s kingdom is here! Change your hearts and lives and trust this good news!”’ Jesus came to reconcile us to God and give eternal life. When we trust Jesus as our Savior and make Him our Lord, we begin to live under Christ’s authority. Obedience to Jesus Christ is how we live in the kingdom of God. Kingdom living begins the moment we trust in Jesus and the Holy Spirit fills us with power. This is indeed good news; we not only have an eternal home with God, but access to abundant life here and now! This is God’s desire for all people.
Just listen to what the apostle Paul tells the Corinthian church:
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
With these words, Paul reminds us we are new creations in Christ. As new creations, we are reconciled to God and join in the ministry of reconciliation. We are Christ’s ambassadors, proclaiming the good news to all. God’s love compels us to tell the story of reconciliation in Christ!
This means when we meet to worship, we are proclaiming the good news of God’s kingdom. Every time our pastors proclaim the word of God, they are proclaiming the kingdom. Wesley Memorial is proclaiming the kingdom in every small group meeting and Sack Pack we assemble and deliver. We are proclaiming the kingdom in every visit to our homeless brothers and sisters, and participation in community ministries. We are proclaiming the kingdom in our global support of the Sollors family and Pastor Anthony in Ghana. We are proclaiming the kingdom in our local community when we invest in the lives of children during VBS and assist our youth in ministering to those in need.
Jesus said his followers should be ‘salt and light’; this is our calling and mission in Cleveland, India, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, and beyond. I believe this calling and mission to be salt and light for Christ was at the heart of Jerry Anderson’s dream of a new church in 1961. I believe this essential mission and calling is still the heart and vision of our congregation today.
I want to close with this prayer from Ephesians 3. The apostle Paul founded the church in Ephesus and stayed there more than two years. Paul loved the Ephesians and wrote to encourage and promote unity within their ranks. Here is Paul’s prayer for them:
For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
No responses yet