There once was a people who were neither significant nor exceptional nor privileged. In fact they did what most people of the time did: worked, married, raised children, celebrated, mourned, and carried out the basic stuff of life. You would not think them unique, because their dress, homes, and professions were much like that of everyone else. What was different about them, however, was their strange conviction that they had been chosen by God to be a special people, a journeying people who were forced to discover again and again what God wanted them to be doing in the world.
That community was what the Bible calls “the people of God,” and their stories are captured in Abram’s leaving of Ur, the wilderness wandering of the Israelites, the partial occupation of the Promised Land, and the Babylonian exile. We also have insight into their life through the stories of the early churches, partially told by Luke in his Gospel and the book of Acts. From these stories we see how God’s people were sojourners, like their father Abraham, who sought a home like strangers in a foreign land, looking for a city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Heb. 11:9–10). At every stage in the biblical narratives is hope for a future reality toward which the people are moving.
Being missional means we join this heritage, entering a journey without any road maps to discover what God is up to in our neighborhoods and communities.
