The Mission of Ascent Church

We are in part six of our series over the vision of Ascent. We have covered three parts of the vision frame thus far, which means we only have two topics left to discuss. This week we will look at our mission in greater detail before looking at our vision proper for the final five weeks of the series.

If you haven’t already, please read the previous five post in this series by clicking here. ​

The above picture is our "vision frame" for more on this, check out the first post in this series. If you'd like to view a larger picture of the frame you can do so by clicking here. ​

It is now time to talk about the mission of Ascent. This is the “what we do” part of the vision frame. In other words, if someone were to ask you what Ascent was all about you could quickly summarize the vision by sharing our mission with them. Our mission statement is as follows:

We are everyday people (re)presenting Jesus in our everyday lives.

We will seek to break this mission statement down throughout this post, but if you have read the previous installments of this series you probably won’t learn anything new. That is because the rest of the vision frame is what makes our mission a reality. Before we can say what we do, we have clarify why we are doing it, how we are going to do it and who will accomplish it (Part 1, 2, 3).  

Everyday people in everyday life.

I won’t belabor this point. If you read the post on our third value, “We embrace a lifestyle of worship”, you will get good description of what it means to be everyday people on mission in everyday life.

Here is quote about being everyday people on mission from that post.

“We have been taught, not by words always, that the Pastor was the most qualified to make disciples and pray for the sick. This is tragic! In Jesus we all have equal access to the throne room of God. We are all sent on mission, not just the pastor.

In the New Testament we see that pastors are given a unique responsibility as they are the under-shepherd for God’s people in a local church, but they are not given a unique position of importance in God’s mission. We are all called to follow Jesus and be a disciple who makes disciples.

Every believer (including you) is a missionary! If we keep reading the verse above (1 Peter 2:5), it says the reason for this is so that we can offer a spiritual sacrifice. In Romans, Paul describes this as worship. We worship God with the way we live our lives. We pour our lives out for the mission of God.”
Here is another quote from the post regarding mission in our everyday lives.

“The faith we often hear about in churches today is not really faith. It’s a bunch of people who got scared about hell or wanted to make their parents happy so they raised their hand, repeated the right theological statements and got baptized. That is not Christianity my friends.

I am not saying we must work for our salvation. By no means! That is found only in Jesus. The gospel is good news that Jesus has done what we couldn’t! He paid for our salvation. But, friends if we really believe Jesus is who He says He is then we will follow Him where he asks us to go. We will re-center our lives around Him. We will follow him everyday, every hour, every minute that we exist. We will not be perfect and the good news is we don’t have to be. We live out of grace, knowing He has paid for the penalty we deserved to pay and we get to enjoy the treasure that only He deserves to enjoy.

If we understand this, we will take on the posture of the disciples; dropping our nets and imperfectly following Jesus in all of life as He molds us into who are called to be.”

(re)present Jesus

It’s two words with the same spelling. Clever, I know! I can’t take full credit for the term though. I first saw this expressed in a different way by Transformation Church in Tulsa. I love it, because it sums up exactly what we are hoping to do as Ascent.

We want to re-present Jesus. That doesn’t mean we are changing what we believe about Jesus. If we were that would make us a cult, not a church. What I mean by this is that we want to show people who the real Jesus is. In northwest Oklahoma it is unlikely that anyone has truly never heard about Jesus. The problem is many of them have a wrong view of who Jesus is. They believe He is a ruthless dictator awaiting for you to mess up so that He can damn you to eternal torment or on the other end of the spectrum they believe He is a weak man who wants to buy you cotton candy and honestly doesn't care about your sin all that much. He is neither. In fact, He is none of the following.

• Jesus is not white. (I know all the pictures you’ve seen tell you different story, but in fact He was middle eastern man.)
• Jesus isn’t a politician. (He actively fought against those who tried to put Him in political power in His day. It is interesting that people still try to claim Jesus for their chosen political party in 2019. Newsflash, you can be a democrat, republican, anarchistic, even libertarian and follow Jesus. His concern isn’t political power. He is already a King.)
• Jesus isn’t american. (Sometimes we tend assume being a good american means being a good Christ follower. While I am glad to be american, I am primarily a citizen of the Kingdom of God. And my home will continue on in abundance long after america crumbles.)
• Jesus isn’t your genie. (He loves you and one day there will be complete restoration. There will be no sickness or poverty. But, on this side of eternity we will suffer. That’s not to say Jesus won’t heal you or provide you with worldly wealth, He may, but He is not obligated to do either because you follow Him or pray really hard. Sometimes the greatest thing He can do for us is to allow us to die a slow death without a dollar to our name. He is more concerned with eternal holiness than momentary happiness.)  
• Jesus isn’t soft on sin. (He bled and died a tortuous death so that we could defeat sin. He knows it leads to death. He hates sin not because he doesn’t want you to experience pleasure, but because He knows sin lies and always leads to death. It destroys you and those around you.)
• Jesus didn’t come so that you could pass a theological test.  (He is not satisfied because you know the ABC’s of salvation and can successfully repeat them. He is interested in true belief. The kind that leads you into following Him. The kind where you submit your control and give Him complete authority over every area of your life.)

The real Jesus is much better than any counterfeit being presented. We will be passionate about exposing people to this Jesus who invites us to participate in the Kingdom of God. He paves a way for us to know God, make a difference, discover purpose and find freedom.

Not only do we want to re-present Jesus, but we also want to represent Jesus. In other words, we can’t just tell people who the real Jesus is, we must show them! We will be known for our love as a church. Here are just a few ways that should manifest itself in our church.

• We should have true family-like love for one another.
• The hungry should be fed.
• The thirsty should be able to drink.
• The prisoners should find compassion not condemnation.
• The homeless should find shelter.
• The naked should be clothed.
• The strangers should be welcomed in.
• The orphans and widows should be cared for.
• Our neighbors should think of us in times of need.
• We should be known for our joy and celebrations.
• We should weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who weep!
• We should advocate for the helpless and hopeless.

Those are just a few of the things we will do if we take our mission serious. I don’t just mean in the spiritual sense, I mean we should actually and physically do these things. We should do them not just as a “church”, but as the everyday individual people who make up the church.

There you have it. The mission of Ascent is something that can only be accomplished through the power of the Holy Spirit. The good news is that He is working in and through us! I am so excited to see this mission take root as we embrace our why, how, and who.

One more time the mission of Ascent:  

We are everyday people (re)presenting Jesus in our everyday lives.

Thank you for taking time to read this and the rest of our vision series. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below or by emailing me at pastorblakefarley@gmail.com. 

​Pastor Blake ​​