2022.05.23

  • mission
    • Theological Mission
      • We are made to be compassionate creators
        • terms:
        • **God is introduced in Genesis as a compassionate creator, whose way of ruling is precisely through acts of creation. **
          • Genesis depicts God as a compassionate creator, who creates and cultivates life, calls forth its potential, and names it, organizes it, and blesses it.
        • **God then creates humanity to imitate that image, likeness, and rule. This points at our capacity for creation. **
          • Genesis tells us that we were made to be like God. And it spells that out in a number of ways—we are to become God's "image and likeness", to create and cultivate life, and to rule over all creation. The way we are to do these things is in imitation of God's own character and process.
          • To that end, Genesis depicts God leading humanity in imitation of the creation week: naming and categorizing, organizing and blessing.
          • This connection is further teased out in the framing of a "creation week", which connects the pattern of God's creative work and our creative work. We see this in the rationale which Exodus offers for the Sabbath.
          • In the story of Noah's Ark, God leads humanity in the construction of a giant technological project to save the world. And when Noah and his family emerge from the Ark, God reiterates the Genesis 1 blessing, as if to proclaim that this is what humanity is intended to look like.
        • In Christ, we see that the only sustainable form of image, likeness, or rule is through compassion. Christ embodies this, and so is able to be the perfect image and likeness for us, and to call us into the work of compassionate creation that forms the future of the world and the cosmos.
          • In Christ, we see a humanity truly like God, God's perfect image and likeness. And in Christ, we see that the rule which God has called humanity to, can only be sustainably exercised through creativity and compassion.
      • We are called to participate in the work of Christ and of God
        • "Christ in you"
        • "The Holy Spirit"
        • We were created for good works—works of creation and compassion, works of healing, renewing, blessing. We are saved by grace in order that we may be empowered to do these good works.
        • We are included in Christ through the Spirit, so that we may participate in the works of God. Not as a rival to God's works, but as an invited participant in them. This is the glory of God.
        • We are called to do these works, even beyond the bounds of human comprehension. Christ tells us we will do his works, and even "greater works than these". Paul tells us we will judge celestial beings. John the Revelator tells us we will even be invited to reign alongside Christ, from the throne of God.
      • Our eschatology is the renewal of the world
        • "On Earth as it is in Heaven"
        • "Renewal of all things"
        • "All creation waits in eager expectation..."
    • Faith-Renewing Mission
      • We are not alone
      • We can rise to join them
      • "They" are defined by trust, cooperation, compassion, love
      • Philosophy & Epistemology

    • Technological Mission