Living in mission is not an easy fix to church programming or something that provides a way to keep Christians “involved in missions.”  It is a lifestyle, a way of life.  It is the kind of living where your life is so integrated with the intention of following Christ, that it breaks the confines of religious activities and instead seeks fulfillment through the challenges that living among our community has to offer.  Life among community is about real life among each other.  Life among each other is imperfect, filled with flaws because that’s what each of us is all about.  This weighs in stark contrast to the clean and neat presentations of the worship ritual that many of us are accustomed to when thinking about “church”.  In fact, the flaws among community are filled with addiction, grief, anger, poverty, broken homes and broken lives.  It is also a community filled with those seeking to find hope, expand it, share it and give back among all of the problems that we experience as humans.  As we do this, we connect… we realize that our problems do not exist in isolation, but rather among the common ground of humanity. Amidst it all, holding it together is a God who is actively working among people in the community among us, empowering them constantly to be the hands, feet and voices of this hope among our messy lives.  He doesn’t ask for any of this to be optional for His followers, or for His followers to be perfect. Rather,  lives in the messy imperfect house His followers’ hearts so that he can be perfectly identified.  As he works in their lives, it is no private matter reserved for quiet time among the pews one day a week.  It is life lived in action out loud, day in and day out, through the course of a lifetime for the sake of messy people like us.