A few days ago I received this question from a PCC person who had some follow-up questions after my last sermon: What do you think of couples having a mission? I assume this comes out of our recent focus on living missional lives within our culture. This question, combined with a conversation with (pastor) Steve King yesterday about parents inviting their kids into God’s mission, really got me thinking.

Jesus-followers can probably agree that participating in God’s redemptive mission in intrinsic to our identities. Hopefully we would also agree that how we participate in this mission depends on many things: age, culture, skill-set, geography, etc. I’d like to briefly explore how three different life-stages (for lack of a better hyphenated word) impact our missional involvement: being single, being married, and raising children.

Given that I was married to Maggie just before my 22nd birthday, and given that we don’t have children, you may want to disregard most of what I’ll say in this short series. My experience of being single or raising children is almost nonexistent. But will that stop me? Of course not! Given my inexperience, I’ll keep my thoughts brief. Mostly this series will ask some questions, make some observations, and look at a few portions of Scripture.

Comments on this series are very welcome, whether you agree with me or not. Check back for part one in a couple of days.