This three-part series challenges the church to reconsider what mission looks like in Australia’s increasingly diverse, urban, and secular context. Beginning with Jesus’ call in Acts 1:8 to move beyond our comfort zones, the articles explore who is actually living in our cities, what younger and spiritually curious Australians are longing for, and whether our churches are creating communities where they can experience identity, belonging, purpose, and the love of Jesus. Ultimately, it asks a confronting missional question: God is already in our cities, why aren’t you?
Are you ready for the people in the cities?
Are you ready to mingle with Muslims, Hindus, Consumers, University Students, the LGBTQAI+ community?
Are you ready to accept Jesus’ call to meet people where they are, as they are?
In Acts 1:8 Jesus calls his disciples to get uncomfortable. Once we receive the power of the Holy Spirit, we are to be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
In a first world country that offers so many comforts, I often need reminding that sharing the gospel, and fulfilling The Great Commission, is a call to discomfort. In Acts 1:8 the disciples are first called to enter Jerusalem – a world that is familiar and perhaps traumatic. Jerusalem was familiar in tradition, yet they crucified Jesus there and rejected many prophets. Jerusalem contained deep devotion, and deep resistance.
Yet mission begins there.
The gospel needs to be spread locally, relationally, and among familiar people.
The disciples were being called to witness in a place that brought them fear, opposition, and recent trauma.
For us today, it could be our families, local neighbourhood, apartment buildings, cafes, workplaces, and so on.
Mission begins where you already are.
By the end of the verse, we have made our way through Judea, which is slightly different to our familiar context and pushes us a little further out of our comfort zone. Samaria, which calls us to love those we “should” have hostility towards and despise. This is people radically different to you, culturally and religiously, people you do not naturally understand in worldview or way of life.
And yet, Jesus deliberately includes enemies and outsiders in the mission field.
“…to the ends of the earth” echoes Isaiah 49:6, “you shall be a light to the Gentiles, My salvation to the ends of the earth.” The nations now gather in cities. You no longer need to travel overseas to encounter other religions, cultures and traditions.
Jesus pushes us across religious, political, societal, social, and geographical barriers. To name a few.
You can pick which of those places God is calling you to minister in, maybe the city is familiar and traumatic, maybe it is somewhere you have never wanted to go.
Never, until the Holy Spirit breaks barriers and creates readiness for multi-cultural/religious friendship in you.
The Spirit consistently pushes the church beyond comfort zones. And we MUST have the Holy Spirit’s power to reach the city.
So, if mission begins where you already are, it ends where we haven’t been. And that could be your next-door neighbour.
God is moving, are you ready to join in?
