Community as Mission

This sums up  the driving metaphor behind what we want our church plant to be.  This quote explains why our church is named New City Covenant Church.

Key images of God’s alternative community, the missional church, are found in the Gospel’ descriptions of the people of God as “the salt of the earth,” a “light of the world,” and a “city set on a hill.”  These images suggest that mission is not just what the church does; it is what the church is. Saltiness is not an action; it is the very character of salt.  Similarly, light or a city on a hill need not do anything in order to be seen.  So too it is with God’s “people sent.”  The visible, taste-able nature of their community is their missional purpose: by encountering that “holy nation,” others “may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).  Who the community is and how it lives points to God and is an invitation to join the community in praising God.  The church by its life together shows others the nature of the reign of God.  The church is a preview of life under the rule of God in the age to come, a forerunner of the new Jerusalem, a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, a sign of the reign of God.

In North America, what might it mean for the church to be such a city on a hill? to be salt? to be a light to the world?  It means, first of all, that the inner, communal life of the church matters for mission.  Instead of separating the work of particular congregational communities or the church in general into mission and nurture, the total life of the “people sent” makes a difference to its apostolic witness.  How Christians behave toward one another, the testimony that their relationships make in the public square, and the character of their life together as a whole community are integral to their apostolic mission. (Missional Church, pg. 128)