May 2016 Jottings

Jottings…

May 2016! We get to celebrate Mother’s Day and Memorial Day. Here at Cole we also are celebrating ministry. To stick with the alliteration May is Missions Month. Like the soup it is “Mmmm mmmm good!” We want to focus on various mission needs and activities – some of them are quite familiar to us at Cole and some will probably be new. We are actively engaged in some and not so much with us.

Missions can mean so many things. Maybe it conjures up the image of pith helmets and jungles. Maybe what we think of is more the soup kitchen in the inner city. Maybe the main thing that comes to mind is money since we often only hear about missions when money is needed.

The word mission is rooted in Latin and is synonymous with the Greek word apostle. The idea is to send. Missionaries/apostles are “sent ones.” We normally only associate those words with people who have a special calling to be vocationally engaged in ministry that is often cross class and cross-cultural.

The verses that such missionaries often cite, though, are meant for the whole church. Jesus says to the church in Matthew 28: “Go into all the world and make disciples …” In Acts 1, Jesus says to wait on the Holy Spirit but when that filling comes “you will be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.” The United Methodist Church says our mission is to make disciples for the transformation of the world.

There are lots of people, groups and churches doing that. There is lots more that needs to be done. That’s why we are using May to focus on missions. Come hear a bit about what God is doing in our community, city and world. To return to my alliteration, let’s use May to think in terms of “Maybe there is a place for me!”

- Pastor Brian