Mike Frost - Plenary Session - November 17, 2009
Mike Frost was his usual powerful and profound self last night. He is a great story teller and has a knack for cutting through the cruft. One of his cast-off comments last night has been rolling around in my head… he talked about "being purified by the missio dei (mission of God)". How does mission purify those engaged in it? For me it calls to mind the parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25. The goats are people that engage in religion but never turned those beliefs into actions. The sheep are those that turned belief into action and realized that Christ could be found behind the eyes of "the least of these". Jesus, the sent of God, requires that we his followers be sent. It would seem that eventually Jesus stops attending religious services. Perhaps out of boredom? Perhaps because he is out searching for the one lost sheep? Given this Christians at some point must leave the safe confines of the church in order to re-establish contact with God. At some point we must establish contact with him behind the eyes of marginalized, the oppressed, the outcast, and the discarded. The purification comes through re-establishing contact with God out in the world. Speaking personally, something happens to Christians when they engage with people around them. We learn to love. We learn to extend ourselves for other. We learn to see the world differently. We learn to, with full self-confidence, make ourselves less than others. We develop a deep and profound respect for the powerful way that God engages with our neighbours before they even know what is going on. We develop confidence (some call it faith) in God because we have watched Him work first hand.
