A Missional Movement
Week 3: Devotional reflections on the theme of the 2024 Virginia Annual Conference
Introduction
This year’s theme for the Virginia Annual Conference, the yearly gathering of United Methodists across Virginia, is an interesting one, and one I would like to reflect on in a devotional manner. The theme is “A Conference in Three Movements.”
Bishop Sue defines these three movements saying:
The theological movement from prevenient grace to sanctification. This is the movement of the Holy Spirit in the human heart.
The historical movement of Methodism captured in our past, lived in our present, and pointed toward our future. This is the movement of the Holy Spirit in the church.
The missional movement from gathered spaces into all the world. This is the movement of the Holy Spirit in the community.
In the final week, I reflect on these individually as the members of the Annual Conference have now departed from this time of Holy Conferencing. To learn more about this year’s conference gathering, click here.
A Missional Movement
“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:19a)
A NEW THING…
The quintessential passage of sending people forth from large gatherings that include teaching. For many, we may know Matthew 28, and understand the mission, but around us, we can see living out that mission as something deeply difficult. It is hard to imagine how we move out of this seeming rut we are in.
As I called in my sermon this last Sunday, I offered that our natural response to God’s grace is this manner of holiness. However, holiness does not start or stop at the doors of the church or with the “Amen” of a prayer. Holiness is a life lived in the world around us. It is traveling from place to place that we go in our lives and it is covenanting to God’s work in the world. It is taking the grace we have received and it is offering it to others in its purest, most authentic form.
What if the “new thing” that we are often called toward in scripture is not something truly new, but the same calling we have had since the dawn of creation? What if it is the same calling for a new day?
Isaiah, in this portion, is traversing this unknown nature of exile. The people of Israel are in a foreign land. They have lost their homes, their land, and their sense of comfort in how they thought life would play out. The connection to land seemingly expresses and conveys the connection they have with their creator. However, a new thing, a new day, was occurring. A new opportunity to know and understand more about their relationship with God and their relationship with humanity.
Would they execute that relationship perfectly?
By no means, and yet they sought after it. They got uncomfortable and sought God’s movement as they made relationships with the people in Babylon and all over the known world. The Babylonian Exile functionally changed the nature of Judaism. Even when they were able to return to Jerusalem, some stayed in Babylon and even some traveled further away. The nature of God extended beyond the temple, and the people began to know and see their God at work in the world around them wherever they were.
In the Christian tradition, and the New Testament, we began to see this play out in the blessing of the Holy Spirit. Having talked about Acts 2 so much at Pentecost and on many other platforms recently, my mind continues to see the calling of God at that moment and see the scattering that the movement of God calls us towards in that manner of baptism. In receiving the Spirit we are given the stirring of our hearts to yearn after, not just heaven, but after seeing God’s grace play out in the world around us.
Before Pentecost, the disciples and those close to them huddled together in the upper room. However, at the coming of the Spirit, we read stories of how they spread far and wide, creating communities and sharing God’s message through acts of love, service, generosity, and many others. The original story of the church is that of a “Missional Movement.”
Maybe the new thing is not the call, but the day.
Maybe the calling is to look at this time and see what it is we can do to live into this missional witness. To leave our sanctuaries and churches as people emboldened to be the church for the world. To be the church re-incarnated for those we are in community with beyond the walls.
Reflection
What manners of church do we see out in the world?
Where can we create and foster manners of God’s Kingdom that drive us to this missional witness?
How can we live out this calling in each and every new day we experience?