We leap over the sheep we know so well to focus our mission on the lost in the far countries of this world. Living so extensively could be interpreted as escape today. Mission is on our door step. We need to live intensively. An integrity is demanded at home.
Mission is from the inside out.
How easy for us to forget that ministry of reproof, rebuke, admonition and exhortation has been given to the church. A ministry of exhortation can only be given and received in a community of faith grounded in the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. So it is that Paul urges us to speak the truth in love. Love is the anesthetic that makes the surgery possible, the pain bearable, and the truth receivable. It should not be delivered in passing.