In our new OPEN HAND commitment, Co-Mission churches have agreed to consider how we may better engage in cross-cultural mission in London and around the world. PLANT The Senior Pastors and Senior Elders of all our Co-Mission churches have agreed that we do not want to treat cross-cultural mission in London and to the world like the proverbial “sore thumb". Rather we want each of our churches to prayerfully consider how they can build upon what they are currently doing by offering a generous Open Hand to people from all nations in five related ways:
WELCOME
Hebrews says, “do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers” and Romans says, “Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you”! So in the first of our OPEN HAND commitments to cross-cultural mission, Co-Mission churches are each considering how they can better WELCOME people from diverse nationalities and cultures into the life and love of our church families, so that they can be saved for joy in God.
HOST
In Acts 11 we read: “Then Barnabus went to Tarsus to look for Paul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch”. It’s important to recognise when we need help from others who are better equipped than ourselves to reach a particular community. So in the second of our OPEN HAND commitments to cross-cultural mission, our Co-Mission churches are each considering whether they could accept help from a mission agency with experience of reaching people whom we are failing to reach, and therefore to HOST a suitable cross-cultural gospel-worker, because mission is always a team game!
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We read in Acts of Jesus commissioning his disciples to be his witnesses “to the ends of the earth” and of how they first resolved to take the gospel beyond the Jews to other cultures, “some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus”. So in the third of our OPEN HAND commitments to cross-cultural mission, Co-Mission churches are each considering how we can help to PLANT churches into a diverse variety of communities (often called “diaspora” communities) in London. Although it’s often more difficult and costly to plant into cultures other than our own, especially those that are poorer or religiously resistant, we recognise that Jesus has not suggested but commanded us to make disciples of “all nations”!
SEND
Paul, the Apostle of Christ to the nations, writes, “...there’s no difference between Jew and Gentile – the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”. How then can they call on the one they’ve not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they’ve not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?” So in the fourth of our OPEN HAND commitments to cross-cultural mission, Co-Mission churches are each considering who they could SEND to support God’s mission around the world: whether by visiting mission partners to encourage them, joining a short-term mission trip to experience the joys of gospel work in a different culture, or by encouraging some to approach a mission agency to explore long-term mission abroad. This will probably mean sending some who we might have encouraged to serve our own churches in London, to train for going to serve abroad instead. For although Co-Mission is a mission focussed upon London, we want the churches we plant and strengthen to be spiritually healthy enough to care about God’s Kingdom far and wide!
