Missional Rhythms w/ Charles Fleming

Welcome to the GC Podcast. This year, we’re centering on Kingdom Culture and exploring how it transforms ministry and equips leaders for kingdom living. Through conversations with Grace Communion Seminary professors and a few other guests, we’ll explore how their teachings equip ministry leaders to embody kingdom values.

This is the GC Podcast, where we help you grow into the healthiest ministry leader you can be. Sharing practical insights and best practices from the context of Grace Communion International Churches. Here’s your host, Cara Garrity.

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Cara: Hello friends, and welcome to today’s episode of GC Podcast. This podcast is devoted to exploring best ministry practices in context of Grace Communion International churches.

I’m your host, Cara Garrity. And today we are blessed to have Charles Fleming with us as a guest, a professor at Grace Communion Seminary. And today we’re going to be continuing our exploration of our 2025 theme of Kingdom Living through the course that Charles teaches at GCS, called Missional Living.

So, thank you so much for joining us today, Charles.

[00:01:15] Charles: Cara, thank you so much for having me. It’s a joy to join you.

[00:01:18] Cara: Yeah, I’m looking forward to our conversation. I know that this class is really rich, so I kind of just want to start from the foundations. What does missional living have to do with the concept and practice of kingdom living and kingdom culture?

[00:01:37] Charles: Cara, that’s just a great question. I really appreciate it because in a sense, it addresses what I see as three of the big challenges that churches across the denominations, not just those of us in GCI, but across the denominations, are facing as we try to help people to become more missional. I just mentioned those three questions because they shaped the way I designed the course.

One is just understanding what mission is and why it’s so important. A second one that I see people struggling with is what does the idea of the kingdom have to do with mission? How do you integrate that or how does that shape the concept of mission? And how do we go about living a missional or sent life?

That’s the practical side of it. Because even when people get a sense of the importance of mission, the how-to becomes a challenge. So those are three big, I think, misunderstandings. Two of them are misunderstandings. The first one, what is mission? I think people have an idea that mission is optional.

It’s an optional ministry. It’s not key to what the church is all about. And even the concept of missionary, because of our history, when Christianity was a regional religion, just restricted to Europe. And then in the colonial period, missionaries went out. We have this vision of missionaries being somebody that goes far away, which is so far — that’s included in the idea of mission. But if you just restrict it to that, then people begin to think it might be that mission is optional if you’re living in a, what you might call so-called Christian country.

The second misunderstanding: what does the idea of the kingdom have to do with mission? And a lot of people just don’t recognize that the kingdom is central to the whole concept of mission.

And I’m going to talk a little bit more about that later, but we really need to help people recognize that if we don’t have a robust view of the kingdom, if the kingdom is kind of like a blank placeholder that people fill with whatever their thoughts are, and it’s not a concrete concept, then it’s divorce from mission. And the whole idea of why the church exists begins to be skewed.

And then the third one is just how to do it. And so, maybe I can explain a little bit about the class by giving the backstory. When I was asked to teach this class — my understanding is that Mike Rasmussen, our supervisor of ministry here in the U. S., asked Greg Albrecht and the folks at GCS to provide some courses for people who would not be doing a master’s degree. There might be people working in the different Avenues, the Faith, the Hope, and the Love Avenue. Could GCS offer courses for people who were not pursuing a master’s, maybe didn’t even have a bachelor’s degree, but could get some training through GCS?

So, the class I developed is what I call a hybrid. It’s robust enough for pastors and others doing a master’s degree, but it is also designed, especially with Love Avenue leaders and members in mind. And so that’s the backdrop, background of how I designed it.

So, I asked myself, how would I answer those three challenges: helping people get a better view of what mission is and why it’s important; how you integrate the concept of the kingdom into the whole understanding of mission; and then how there’d be a practical section. So basically, I divided the course into two parts. The first four is what I call addressing the “being.”

It’s a theological foundation where we ask four questions: who is God — four who questions, Cara. Who is God? Who are we as the church? And then who am I as an individual member of the church? And fourthly, who are our neighbors? Because mission is all about reaching out to our neighbors, people who do not yet know Jesus.

The first four weeks, I address what I call the “being.” Why do we exist? Why did Jesus raise us? Who am I as part of that church? And can I get a better understanding of the people I’m trying to reach out to?

Once we lay that foundation, when we have six weeks of practicals, so that in a sense is, is how I structure the course.

And I think your question is just so brilliant. How does mission, what does missional have to do with the concept and practice of kingdom culture? It addresses what I see as three of the big areas, three big challenges. Maybe I could give you an example of how we deal with that.

[00:06:10] Cara: Yeah, that would be excellent.

[00:06:11] Charles: So, the intent of the two parts, the two sections of the course in the first four weeks, we’re trying to cultivate in students and spark an imagination for living sent with the message of Jesus and his kingdom. And to do so in a way that inspires and motivates students to self identify.

I actually will talk a little bit in a moment about how we challenge students to think of one of my “I am” statements. Do I see myself as, I am one sent? I am a missionary. So, it’s an attempt to spark that imagination that “I am.” I self identify as a citizen of the kingdom of love, on mission, sharing the love of Jesus Christ.

So, that’s the intent for the first part of the course, the first four weeks, the “being” section.

And then in the second section, we have six weeks where we offer them a range of simple and yet very practical approaches and skill sets and challenge them to choose the skill sets and the approaches that are relevant to their context. They need to learn how to read their context and see: of these books I’ve read, of those lectures I’ve listened to, et cetera, the discussions I’ve had in class, what do I take away as part of my contribution to the work of Christ in my life? And then to the health of the congregation in terms of developing rhythms that we could become missional?

So, that’s the intent. So, for example, why is mission important? I addressed this in week one. I just asked the, who is God, question and lay a theological, a biblical foundation. And we see that God is missional.

Because the folks who have done research about mission care have found out that within the last 100 plus years, there’s been a major paradigm shift in understanding of mission in the light of who God is. And they actually cite Trinitarian theologians and specifically Karl Barth as being one of the leaders who has brought about this new theological paradigm where we see mission must be understood as being derived from the very nature of God, and God is a missional God.

Some would even go so far as to say mission is one of the attributes of God, an attribute in the sense that because God is so much a God of love, he’s always reaching out on mission.

And Michael Reeves, who wrote one of the books that we use in the course entitled, Overflow: How the Joy of the Trinity Inspires our Mission. Michael Reeves has a beautiful way of describing it. And I’m just going to read a short section that we emphasize in the class. And this is Reeve’s description. He says,

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were happy in themselves, and they enjoyed one another before the world was. Apart from the fact that God delights to communicate and spread his goodness, apart from that, there would never have been a creation or redemption.

So asks Michael Reeves, why did God create? And here we see him channeling Acts 17:26, where Paul talks about God didn’t create because there was a need. He didn’t have a need. He says, so why did God create? And Michael Reeves answers because God delights to spread his goodness. In other words, he’s like a sun, S U N, goodness, blazing out with love.

God didn’t create because he had to, because of any lack. He created because he was so happily bursting with goodness. God is so overflowingly, super abundantly full of life in himself that he delighted to spread his goodness. His innermost being is a sun of light, life, and warmth, always shining out, radiant and outgoing.

And so, this image of a God, who Father, Son, and Spirit were so delighting in life that they said, we want to share this. And they went on mission with the creation. So, we see even before we were created, God had missional — if you could call it this way, using human language — God had missional instincts. He’s just reaching out. His love overflows.

So, that book by Reeves has really been helpful to students to get a picture of a God who is just on mission. He’s just sharing his love, and he invented us. He invented humans so that there could be other creatures, who could be image bearers of his and who could enjoy life with him.

And that’s the destiny he has for us in eternity. And why he put us on this planet. So, what is mission? It is the living expression of God’s ongoing love for humanity. God in the person of Jesus Christ is on mission. So, this is my attempt to help students begin to see that mission is not just a thing, but it’s an important aspect of who God is and therefore of what we need to pay attention.

And so, that leads to week two where we ask the question about, well, who are we as the church and who am I? And we immediately begin to see that mission is not optional. One of the scriptures that I hit pretty heavily in the class is Hebrews 3:1. You know, in Hebrews 2, as you might recall, Cara we have this beautiful description of Jesus coming on mission. He took on flesh and blood. He’s not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters. And following up on that in beginning in what we have as chapter 3:1, Paul the writer of Hebrews tells us, “Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, we who share in the heavenly calling.”

So, here’s Jesus sent by the Father. And we get to share in that divine and heavenly calling. “Fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest,” as you know, means sent. And so, in the second set of lectures in week two, we’ve been taking a look at the Church and seeing that we are, this is part of our calling, part of our vocation.

And I actually challenged the students with an exercise where I tell them that, you know, we all have a number of I am statements. I’m a male, a citizen of the United States. I’m a retired minister. We have, you know, I’m a husband, I’m a father, I’m a grandfather. We have eight to 10, maybe 12 “I am” statements that get to the core of who we understand ourselves to be.

And I challenged students to read the New Testament writers where, for example, they say, “you are a royal priesthood, you are ambassadors for Christ” and turn them into “I am” statements. And then I said, in your living life, do you have a part of your core identity among those 8, 10, 12 “I am” statements, “I am one sent,” “I am an ambassador”? Is that a go-to the way of defining yourself? And I invite them to get into the process of living out of that, making that not just some formal statement you might put on an application, but that they live out of a sense that I am sent.

So, that’s the way I try to help students deal with that first one, that first misunderstanding that mission is often seen as optional. No, it’s not. So, my hope here is that with a strong identification with the God of mission and adding an “I am sent, I am an ambassador” sense to their identity, they’d be more deeply committed to mission.

So, that’s one of the ways that I started.

[00:13:46] Cara: Yes. I appreciate you sharing that. And I really, really appreciate beginning with, you said the “being.” Who am I? I think that that’s really powerful. Yeah, it’s giving me something to chew on. Is that one of my, “I am”? Am I a sent one?

So that’s excellent. Thank you.

[00:14:08] Charles: Okay, well, once we lay that foundation of cultivating that type of imagination and address that first misunderstanding, then we move to the more practical side of things. And this is where I offer them a range of perspectives that are simple and practical. And so, we start talking about the need for proclamation and demonstration, and for proclamation that there’s the approaches.

I have two weeks, weeks five and six — week five is where I look at the popular understanding of the gospel. And Jeff Vanderstelt, and we read his book on Gospel Fluency. That’s one of the books that students read. He actually said that too many Christians in his opinion have what he calls a minimalist understanding of salvation.

And so, we explore that. We take a look at the way that some people have said that we, a lot of Christians, have like a sin management approach. If I could just avoid sin — some have a very individualistic approach that we have sinned and that we’re just going away off to heaven. And it’s all about my personal individual salvation.

And so, one of the things that we do in week five is we look at those gaps. The critique of people like Dallas Willard. N. T. Wright, Scott McKnight, Jeff Vanderstelt, as I mentioned, showing where in the popular imagination the gospel has really been reduced in people’s understanding, and they don’t have that holistic view. And so, I challenge the students to make sure that they don’t fall into those traps.

And then in the week six, we take a look at, well, what is God’s story? Because one of the things that Vanderstelt says in his book is that we all live out of stories. And if we don’t have God’s big story in mind, we sometimes just overly personalize the gospel into just my private salvation: I’m just here; this world is a bad place; I’m going to go off to heaven.

And so, we go through, and we look across the themes of the Bible and we see that the whole idea that God had — we asked the question, what was God’s original intent in creating humans? And what is the ultimate destiny that he has in mind for us?

And there’s some themes that just crop up right across the view. In other words, one of the things we notice is the concept of a royal priesthood. We look in Eden, and we see that the vocation that we humans were given was to join Jesus, to join the triune God, in taking care of the planet. We, like a royal priest, taking this planet that’s teeming with potential and bringing it to its full glory.

We look at Exodus and we recognize that in Exodus 19, Israel was called after the fall in the garden, Israel was called to be a kingdom of priests (and that’s Exodus 19.) So, we see a royal priesthood ruling under God. In the garden, we failed at that. So now Israel is raised up to be that royal priesthood.

And then we come to the New Testament, and Peter tells us that we’re royal priesthood. We go to the book of Revelation, and we see that in eternity, we are going to reign with Christ. We’re going to be his servants. He’s going to be the king of Kings. But we’re going to be a kingdom of priests. And as it says, reigning, I tell the students, I like to think of that as administering.

We get an eternity, not only to enjoy life in the family of God for all eternity, but we get to join him in the Father’s business. Jesus came, and he said he was about the Father’s business. And we see that we get to help bring out the potential, in this universe that is teeming with potential. God’s going to ask us to join him in administering it.

I don’t speculate what that will be like. I just take the words at face value that in this life we’re being prepared for that. So, I try to help students get a feel for the full beauty of the gospel of the kingdom of God.

And this is where I integrate the — you know, you asked about the connection of

the kingdom with mission. Well, let’s face it, without Jesus coming, there would not have been any kingdom. So, Jesus’ mission — without him coming on mission, there would have been no reestablishment of the kingdom of God on earth. But on the other hand, without God’s desire to reestablish his kingdom, Jesus would never have been sent.

So again, just reinforcing that idea that, you know, we cannot separate it —kingdom from mission. Jesus came because the Father was — you know, the triune God looked at us when we sinned and they said — it’s clear that they just came to this commitment: we are not going to live through eternity without our beloved human family; they’ve gone prodigal, but we’re going to find a way.

And they did! Before the foundation of the world, there was this commitment that God, the Son would become Jesus would come. So, we see — I try to help students see that we cannot talk about mission without understanding God’s big story, that he is reestablishing his rule over the creatures who he made to be image bearers.

We have creativity, we are conscious, we are self conscious, we have choices, and (as we know from Karl Barth and others) God has chosen his freedom to love us and he wants us to choose freely to love him back. So, he gave us choice, but God is wooing us back, and Jesus is the wonderful suitor that has come to represent God. We know what God looks like because of Jesus, and he has rescued us. So, mission and kingdom have to go together.

And in weeks five and six, I’m trying to help students see that and have that big picture again, sparking an imagination for, “this is more than just me running away from hell by accepting Jesus.”

I’m running away from hell, and Jesus has carried me away from the consequences of my sin. But I also want to be running towards this glorious destiny that God has for me. And I get to join Jesus, participating in this ongoing ministry of Jesus that we call mission. And so, so that’s weeks five and six.

And then the last four weeks is where we get into the practical areas. And so, we use Michael Frost’s book on building habits. It’s trying to help students form themselves, spiritually forming themselves to be missional.

And I chose books that I know a lot of our leaders are already familiar with. But just giving them an opportunity in the discussion forums to talk these things through and let iron sharpen iron. But Frost has a beautiful, simple approach to building missional habits. I’ve used some of the material from place-sharing. I got your permission, Cara, to use the interviews that were done with Anthony and Elizabeth Mullins, with Dishon [Mills].

And so, you know, just allowing the students to actually discuss that, and they actually break out into Zoom meetings to just talk about that. And then we wrap up the course with an attempt to help students learn the skill of discerning in community. So, as they prepare for their final paper they get together on Zoom in groups of three and four.

And each student has a half an hour to share: these are the things I’m taking away. And to get feedback from their peers as they talk about how they would implement it in their area.

So that’s, that’s what I try to do as I think back on the original intent of the class — how can we help pastors and Avenue champions to take material and let it spark them that their sense of who they are has changed, but here also are some very practical things that you can do. So that’s kind of an overview of how I’ve tried to gear this course, to address the whole commitment of GCI, that we would become healthy church, speaking specifically to the Love Avenue.

[00:22:18] Cara: Yes. Oh, thank you so much. That course sounds so rich. And, you know, if I were to sum up what you shared, it sounds like missional living has everything to do with the kingdom and the kingdom has everything to do with missional living. So, I’m looking forward to taking this course one day.

[00:22:37] Charles: Please do. I’d love to have you in it.

[00:22:39] Cara: Yes, I would love to. I would love to learn. I love what you’ve laid out in terms of the approach to being formed in mission. And so, you know, I’m wondering how does this missional living impact our practice of ministry? You know, you said towards the end of the course, you get more into the practical kind of “living it out” aspects.

And so how, how does it impact our practice of ministry? And then I guess secondarily, what implications does it have for the development of healthy leader and healthy church rhythms?

[00:23:13] Charles: I like these questions, Cara, and here’s how I hope they would unfold. I hope that students would then go back to their congregations, recognizing the importance of imagination. We live out of our imagination. We have a vision of something, and we try to bring it about. Imagination is our day to day life. If you’re planning a vacation, it’s in your imagination that you picture, am I going to go to the Bahamas or would I go to Europe? And you picture what you would like to do, and then you draw a plan from it.

So, I would hope that students would then, in their preaching, in their counseling, in their leading Love Avenue group, and leading a connect group on the Faith Avenue side of things, that they would have a sense that how important it is to have that vision of God, who in the case of the Love Avenue is missional, in the case of a Faith Avenue is the primary disciple-maker of my life. He uses pastors. He uses Bibles. He uses circumstances, but the one who is superintending the process of growth, the disciple, is Jesus.

And so, that students would come away seeing the importance of imagination, seeing the importance of a personal identity that when you read Scripture that says, “you are” (speaking collectively to the church), that we would say, well, how does that shift my self-understanding vice the way I self-identify, am I intentional about becoming adding an “I am” statement?

You know, I am a disciple maker. If you’re in the Faith Avenue, but certainly speaking now to the Love Avenue, do I see myself as someone sent? I’d hope that the students would’ve learned enough to follow Moses’ example where he could read his culture. Remember it says in the book of Hebrews that he gave up the pleasures of Egypt and chose God’s way. In other words, he critiqued his culture, saw where it was impinging on his ability to really serve God.

And so, I’m hoping that students are able to read the culture and see the importance of helping other people to see the need to guard our hearts as we try to live sent, because we’re not withdrawing from society, actually we’re plunging into our neighborhoods, into our workplaces.

Can we guard our hearts and recognize the idolatry in our culture? These are some of the things I hope students can take away. And then just seeing that the gospel of the kingdom of God — Jesus shows up in Mark 1, and it says the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is now available, believe the gospel of what the kingdom of God, the kingdom is more than just me being whisked off to heaven.

The kingdom is understanding that when Christ comes back the second time, and we have the kingdom in its fullness, it’s going to be that heaven and earth are connected. That we are going to be on this earth, this renewed earth, and we’re going to be part of God’s making it the glorious place that it will be.

My hope is that as students go through the practice and the discipline of developing missional habits, that they will become contagious and other people will be drawn to follow them. And that we also recognize that the Love Avenue is not the “be all and end all” of the church. It’s just part of, and we definitely need the Faith Avenue.

We need people to be discipled and strengthened so that they can join us going out with an active and obvious relationship with Christ. We need the Hope Avenue. And so, one of the things I hope they take away from my class is that we’re not just saying it’s all about mission. Mission is central to it, to go out there.

We need the connect groups. We need the Faith Avenue. We need the Hope Avenue. That we would see ourselves as an indispensable part of something larger. So, those are some of the ways that I hope it can address the rhythms in the church, that each student would become contagious for mission and do their part in helping the church to be what it needs to be.

[00:27:28] Cara: Yes. I appreciate that, that wording that you used, contagious —really when we talk about culture building, that is something that I think has a big impact on the rhythms that we live out in the life of a healthy congregation and the life of a healthy leader. And so, for that to be learned in the context of relationship with God and one another in community, I think that that’s a beautiful thing to think about, how that students who take your course can carry with them what they’ve learned in a really tangible embodied way.

And that that would have really direct and practical implications for what the life of the local church is like.

You spoke about some of the takeaways that you hope your students will be able to walk away with and bring into the life of their local church and ministry practices and ministry rhythms. If you got to say one major takeaway from the course, what is one major takeaway that will develop our practice of kingdom living and living out of that kingdom culture and building up that kingdom culture?

[00:28:58] Charles: One of the things to me is — it’s a simple thing, but I think it has huge implications. It’s the definition of mission to me. The most effective — there are many technical definitions, but the one that I find just so beautiful is this: mission is taking the love of Jesus Christ across a boundary or a frontier.

That boundary or frontier could be geographic, like in the history of missions going to Africa or the Caribbean or to South America or whatever, but it also can be generational. It can also be social, crossing educational boundaries, crossing economic boundaries. It’s so beautiful. Now that I’m retired and have grandkids — when I worked for the church [GCI], I did a lot of traveling for the church on mission to different countries, et cetera.

Now I’m at home, and I think the mission I do now is just as important. When I sit in my living room, and I’m talking to my grandkids and helping them have an early understanding of Jesus Christ, I’m on mission. I’m taking the gospel across a generational bound, and I really want people to understand that mission is just a part of natural living.

In my case, in my life cycle, I don’t have the reach I had before. I don’t have the stamina anymore to do the traveling I did. I wouldn’t want to do that. But I have a chance to shape my grandkids, to the church that I visit to help people to get to know Christ and the triune God better.

And so, I hope a big takeaway from the class and even from this conversation as people listen to the podcast is to recognize that mission is just being a good neighbor to your neighbor and being intentional that wherever you can share the love of Christ in a tangible way, [inaudible] actions, or even just to be able to explain why it is that you live the way you do.

And that, that obviously is the payoff, when we get to that point, but it’s just part of the normal rhythm of life. I am living sent when I cross a boundary, maybe it is talking to somebody of a different age group, somebody of a different racial group, somebody of a different economic group, or somebody who — the biggest boundary we could cross is people who don’t know about Jesus Christ, helping them to come across that.

And so that to me is — if sometimes when I’m teaching the class, I go, if people can just get that picture and that’s the big takeaway from my class, then I’m happy about that. And so that, to me, is a definition I would just leave with your listener. Mission is joining Jesus in crossing a boundary and helping people to cross a boundary: the boundary from non-faith to faith, from little understanding to a little bit more understanding, from not being able to trust people because of my life experiences, to now find somebody that I can trust. And then hopefully we can point them to the one they can really trust.

So, that would be a final thought I would want to leave with our listeners because just a follow up to that, as we go through the class, and I use this as an example, people begin to realize that they have been on mission, but maybe they just had a different label for it.

People have been grandparenting their children, and because they had a sense of mission [means] I have to go travel somewhere else, they don’t see it as mission; they’re just saying I’m being a grandparent, or I’m being a parent, or I’m being a good uncle, or I’m being a good teacher at elementary school.

Helping people to realize that even in their life, they have been doing things missionally, but they gave it a different name. And maybe now that they see it as mission, they can be a little bit more intentional even more detail about Jesus and the wonderful love that he offers.

[00:32:55] Cara: Yes, that sounds like, again, I’ve said this before, but such a rich and formational course.

And again, I really appreciate the progression that the course takes a student through of “being,” and then into “how am I expressing that?” What are those practical ministry practices, what does that look like in my own context? How do you read the context of your culture? And I think that as you’ve talked, I really think that the redefining of mission really does highlight to us that we need missional living if we are going to be participating in kingdom culture.

And I really like how so simply you put it that it’s not an option. If we’re living and breathing in the culture of the kingdom and that’s our desire to be formed in that personally, and as a church community with our neighbors, this practice of missional living is going to be there and intentionally allow ourselves to be formed in that, to go in that, I think is a beautiful thing. And I really appreciate the idea of these are things that we’ve been doing all along, in some sense, because we were created in the image of a missional God, right?

And so maybe some things are actually even instinct. But how are we connecting those dots to be more intentional, to have a broader view of what mission is and what it means to live a life that is sent wherever we go, wherever life takes us?

[00:34:46] Charles: Yes.

[00:34:46] Cara: So yes, I am so appreciative, I hope, listeners, that you were able to take away something really meaningful, transformative and practical today. I know that I have, and I hope that it gives you a little bit of a taste to want to learn more, to know more, to grow more in missional living. And if it does, please go ahead and check out this course with Charles on missional living.

And like I said, maybe I’ll see you there in a future semester.

[00:35:20] Charles: Speaking of that, Cara, the class I’ll be offering in the summer, registration begins April 19, and the class begins, I think, in May. So, if anybody’s interested, (and I certainly would love to see you there, Cara, but depending on your schedule) but if any of the listeners are interested, they can contact GCS for the class will be in the summer of this year.

[00:35:43] Cara: Excellent. Okay. So, summer of 2025 and registration around April. So yeah, check out the website too, gcs.edu, and all of that information’s there. You can contact our registrar.

Especially in this year, again, as GCI is exploring this theme of kingdom culture and kingdom living, this class seems so applicable. And more practical than ever, like I think that you mentioned, what is our perception even of mission and how has that changed over the last hundred years? How do we participate in that now in our current context and culture?

So, thank you so much again, Charles. Thank you for taking your time to join me today, for your great work going into this course, for your love for God, and for sharing a little bit about this course with us today.

And so, it is our practice, as you know, with GC podcasts to end the show with a word of prayer. Would you be willing to pray for our churches and pastors and ministry leaders, members, and neighbors in GCI?

[00:36:53] Charles: It’ll be my pleasure. Just one last comment. I really love teaching GCS because by time students take the class that I offer, they’ve already done some of the theology classes, and so it really makes room for a practical class because I can spend a couple of sessions laying out the image, as I did, about the, as I mentioned, about an imagination for God. But then we get to spend six weeks on practical application. So, it’s just a wonderful experience to be at a seminary where we have that robust teaching in the required courses that allow the practical courses to devote that much time. So, it’s just a joy for me.

So yeah, let’s pray.

Our loving Father, we just rejoice in the fact that you truly are our Father. Father, you know that for me that word Father is a verb because you father us. And Lord Jesus, you are that older brother that came to rescue us. We just so appreciate the way that you, as our older brother, take care of us and disciple us, lead us on mission.

And Holy Spirit, we worship you for the fact that you never leave us nor forsake us, even though we do grieve you in the way we sometimes live. And so, I just pray for all of our listeners. I pray for Cara, I pray for all of us in GCI, all the students at GCS, that you would give us a much more clear vision of mission, of the fact that you have already established your kingdom.

We are already a part of that kingdom. We’re citizens of that kingdom. I am, we are citizens of the present kingdom of God, not yet in its fullness, but we’re like an outpost for your kingdom. You’ve given us the privilege, Lord, of living lives where we get to proclaim you and where we let people know that this is what life under the loving rule of King Jesus is like: can I tell you about it? Can I, through my actions, show you some of the wonderful things that come our way when we are under your rule?

May that become, if I could use the word, instinctive for us, second nature, or even first nature, just a part of who we are with you, Holy Spirit. Allow us to be transformed in that way.

We really want to be more missional. You have done such a wonderful work among us, transforming us from who we were to what you’re making us now. And we’re still in a work in progress, but we would like to share that with more people. Show us how Lord and give us the passion to do that. May your passion become our passion.

We pray this in the wonderful and precious name of Jesus, as we pray to you, father in the spirit. Amen.

[00:39:35] Cara: Amen. Amen. Thank you so much, Charles. And for the rest of y’all, keep on living and sharing the gospel until next time.

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Thanks for listening to the GC Podcast. We hope this episode inspired and equipped you to lead with health and purpose. We would love to hear from you. If you have a suggestion on a topic or if there’s someone who you think we should interview, please email us at info@gci.org.