Thursday Reflection for Week 4

Thursday we talked about Jesus and how he "stuck it to the man" through his announcement of the Kingdom of God in what he said and did. But the thing that struck me was the role that we play as the church today. It seems pretty obvious, but our mission as the church is nothing new: we are to carry out the mission that Jesus started during his lifetime, with our participation made possible through the cross. But for some reason it seems to me that we are trying to do "new" things in our churches today. We come up with all of these elaborate programs thinking that we are cutting edge or something, but if they stray from our task of pointing to the Kingdom of God, then what's the point? Ryan commented that the purpose of the Holy Spirit is to continue the mission of Jesus through the church, by empowering us, and gifting us to do so. Then why do we focus on all sorts of other things? Are we grieving the Spirit in doing so? But before all of that we have to know what Jesus was doing, what he was about. Because how else will we do his work?