It's been a while since I last found time to blog, so I thought I'd share this e-mail that I sent to my fellow World Teamers the other day. I expanded a draft by our global director, previewing one of the keynote addresses, so it's a mix of our ideas.
I'm on the communications team for our first-ever global conference next summer. We're calling it 3C, which stands for Community, Collaboration, and Celebration. This e-mail focuses on Community. While its immediate inspiration is the conference, I was encouraged by reflecting in general on Christian community, and I hope it encourages you too!
Have you ever...
... taken your church sledding on an Italian volcano?
... embalmed a body in the Philippines?
... spoken to hundreds of students at the Urbana missions conference?
... let your Cameroonian neighbors eat your dead dog?
... shared the Gospel with a witch doctor in Suriname?
Let's face it, our daily lives look pretty different. Do we really have anything in common?
We do!
Whatever our setting, skills, or personality, we have an incredible bond with each and every person attending the 3C conference.
Our unity won't come from gathering in the same resort, singing the same songs, or even wearing the same snazzy T-shirts.
Rather, we are comrades in the epic battle of redemptive history, pointing to Christ as the Scriptures do (Luke 24:27). We are "striving together as one for the faith of the Gospel." We have common ground in being united with Christ, being comforted by his love, and sharing in his spirit (Philippians 1:27, 2:1).
The central focus of the 3C conference will be to celebrate Jesus together in community. We will discover His will, His plan for us as a community to reach the unreached in partnership with others.
Our human relationships are marred by entropy and fracturing: from the Fall, to Babel, to COVID lockdowns and worker attrition. Yet all things were created by and through and for Christ, and "in him all things hold together." He is the great Reconciler, "making peace by the blood of his cross" (Colossians 1:16-20). And he calls us - his body - to invite others into that same unity with God.
During the 3C conference, we as a World Team community will return to our core guiding principle: the Gospel. The Gospel is good news for those we serve, as well as good news for us, laboring for the harvest each day.
And that will be the second talk of our 3C Conference:
Touched by the Gospel: We are united to Christ!
Together we will explore how the Gospel impacts and influences all that we do:
- in relating to one another as a community, united to Christ;
- in collaborating with others and God's Spirit;
- and in daily celebrating God's sufficiency in our fragility and foolishness.
The presenters for the second message will remind us in fresh ways of this foundation. We will see our total dependence on God's grace to do the ministry to which he has called us.
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Bearing his presence wherever we go, we are members of a community spreading to the ends of the earth. In Christ, we have enough in common to fill eternity. How powerful it will be to taste that community as we exhort each other to drink deeply of his abounding love!
"God's love is as boundless as God himself."
Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly
See you next summer!
