Ordinary people doing ordinary things with gospel intentionality

From total CHURCH: a radical reshaping around Gospel and Community

by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis

Major events have a role to play in church life, but the bedrock of gospel ministry is low-key, ordinary, day-to-day work that often goes unseen. Most gospel ministry involves ordinary people doing ordinary things with gospel intentionality. Whether it is helping a friend, working at the office, or going to the movies, there is a commitment to building relationships, modeling the Christian faith and talking about the gospel as a natural part of conversation…….

But the “ordinary” is only a vehicle for Christian mission if there is gospel intentionality. The ordinary needs to be saturated with a commitment to living and proclaiming the gospel. The gospel is a message, and so mission only takes place as we share that word with people. A commitment to mission through community works only if the gospel is a strong value within that community. Otherwise we simply form good friendships that never go anywhere…….

Western culture has become very compartmentalized. We divide our lives into work time, leisure time, family time, church time, and mission or outreach time. We want to spend more time in evangelism, but because this can happen only at the expense of something else, it never happens. Rethinking evangelism as relationships rather than events radically changes this. Evangelism is not an event to be squeezed into our busy schedules. It becomes an intention that we carry with us throughout the day…….