Missio Dei Church is a young church and admittedly has a long ways to go in our maturity, but these past couple months have been exciting for us.

Recently in a Consistory meeting as we were discussing the life of our church, one member expressed something that we all were feeling but were almost afraid to say, “I am getting bored with church life.” The more we talked, the more that we sensed that God was calling us back to our original vision of the church. We looked back to our early meetings where we were led to be a church that wasn't centered on Sunday mornings, but used Sundays as a launching pad for sending the people of God into His Kingdom on His mission. We reaffirmed our desire to be a church that impacts our communities in real and authentic ways and to be a church that generous with all its resources. It is still our desire to create a plan that will make sending out 50% of everything that comes into the church a reality.

To put this kind of philosophy into motion requires us to really re-look at everything that we have been doing and reconsider why we were doing it. What if the church changes the signals it gave? Instead of making Sunday the big day, what if we made every day the big day? How would that affect our structures, our leadership, our budgets, our ministries?

We don’t have nearly all the answers to those questions and we know we are far, far from perfect but I can tell you this, for Missio Dei Church, things are changing. We are working hard at making sure that the playing field isn’t just Sunday mornings. We have cancelled our office lease in downtown Mokena so that we can invest that money into more pressing community needs. Additionally, we are “cancelling” our normal worship services quarterly so that we can worship through serving!

This past Sunday we put our money and time where our mouth is and showed love to Mokena Elementary School by doing some beautification work around that campus… at no cost to the school district! We spent two hours together doing landscaping: fresh mulch, planting flowers, trimming up shrubs and trees, and cleaning windows!

All because we love our community and we love and serve our community our community because Christ instructs us to love our neighbors (John 10:25-36) and served (Philippians 2:1-11) us!