Dear Friends,
As mentioned in last month’s update, The CityWell has been in a fruitful season of clarifying our vision, which is to become a people who receive the ways of Jesus as our way of life, for the sake of His glory and for the sake of the world. We believe this vision calls us ever deeper into our identity as God’s people and into a way of life that (to the best of our understanding) embodies of the holistic calling of our Lord, Jesus.
The first calling of this vision is to become a people. According to Scripture the church is not a collective of autonomous individuals, but rather a body, a people whose identity is constituted by our relationship with Jesus and the relationships between us as His people. I believe it significant that when Jesus called his first disciples to follow Him He began with a plurality, calling two. There was never a moment when any individual could legitimately say, ‘It’s just me and Jesus.’ Every person Jesus called to follow Him, He called into community. Therefore, one of our central concerns is how we form our lives together such that we truly become a people, and not just a bunch of individuals who happen to see each other on Sundays.
The second component of The CityWell vision is that we receive the ways of Jesus as our way of life. This is all about discipleship, about us becoming apprentices of Jesus. According to Jesus, discipleship is the heart of everything. We are called to leave everything to follow Him, to take His yoke upon ourselves, to carry our cross for His sake, to suffer for Him, to imitate Him, to act in His name in His mission, and finally to make others disciples as well. Discipleship is the basic element of our life with Jesus, and perhaps the most elusive element in far too many people’s experience of the Church.
The third component of The CityWell vision is that we would exist for the sake of His (Jesus’) glory. Simply put, we exist to glorify God, which we do most deeply by proclaiming, in word and deed, that Jesus Christ is Lord. Therefore, we exist as a church only insofar as we are a worshiping community. However, existing as a worshiping community for the sake of Jesus’ glory implies more than our scheduled, formal worship. Rather, we must learn to see all of our lives as an act of worship, to “offer [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God…” This means learning that there is no such thing as “the spiritual part of life,” for there is only life, and all of it belongs to God.
The fourth component of The CityWell vision is that we would exist for the sake of the world. The manner of our life together is to be a sign and testimony of the goodness and purposes of God, and is intended by God to be the primary means by which others come to join in the glorification of our Lord Jesus. To that end, mission is not a work of the church; mission is the cause of the church, and we would not exist without it. The mission is God’s, and God’s mission has a church. Our great privilege and task as God’s people is to join in God’s mission as we follow the Lord into the world. Our hope is that as a people who receive the ways of Jesus as our way of life… for the sake of the world, we are forming a communal context in which our friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers and anyone God puts into our paths can discover the fulsome salvation of Jesus that encompasses every aspect of our lives, now and unto eternity.
This is the CityWell vision and we are excited to learn how to live into this as a community. Please continue praying for us, as this will certainly require the mighty hand of God!
I continue to thank God for you, for your prayers and support, and for the gift each of you have been to my family and me. I pray this update finds you well, and that today you will allow the Holy Spirit to open your eyes that you may see, your ears that you may hear, your hearts that you may feel, and your hands that you may do all that is good and pleasing in the sight of our God.
With great affection,
Cleve
