Mail me comments, suggestions, warnings, flames, whatever The mission of the community now became the primary issue. The gifts of teaching had been identified, and basic classes were offered every semester. Church members met in small fellowship groups committed to worship, tithing, prayer, study, and corporate outreach. Not one of them, however, was able to agree on what its outreach would be. We sat in our little groups and discussed it week after week, but all our prayer, imagining, and investigation produced nothing which caught the common soul. We were slow to recognize that the very diversity of gifts made it impossible to find a corporate mission. One person would say, "Let's have a street music group." The next person would reply, "I'm tone deaf.' Someone would suggest working with alcoholics, and another person would answer, "Not for me." The exploration went on and on, and it seemed there was always someone to put out the fire in another.
Somewhere in the midst of it all it became clear that there was only one way to solve our dilemma. If the church was to find servant structures, the small groups had to be formed around focused and defined missions with each mission also committed to an inward journey of prayer, worship and study. This concept seems very simple to us now, but in those carry days there were no models and no guidelines, nor was there any confirmation of that toward which we struggled. Just about that time we came across what seemed like a very promising book. The writer was describing the very things we were committed to; more than that, he promised to offer help before he was done. Chapter followed chapter with no yielding of secrets. The pages were running out when the writer suggested that those wanting to pursue the matter further turn to the appendix. There one was advised to write to The Church of The Saviour in Washington, DC!
Gordon Cosby still feels that the churches, in their quest for structures that nurture life in people, must know that they are venturing into new territory, and that the resources for their exploration rest in the tremendous untapped potential of their own people. The difficulty is that we so often lack confidence in ourselves and in our companions and search for the answers in some other place.
The decision to abandon the small fellowship groups in order to form mission groups was again a tearing one. For one thing it meant parting with those with whom we had shared the very depths of ourselves, and with whom we had deep bonds. Secondly, some of us were not at all convinced it was essential; and thirdly, there was really no place to go. When it came right down to it, we had never taken seriously our own responsibility to hear call and to issue it. At one point it seemed that we were all milling around in a kind of anguished confusion, as of Egypt though we, too, had been brought out pt to die in the wilderness.
In the midst of the confusion Gordon walked with the sureness of one headed for a far better place. He stopped to reason, comfort and confront, but there was no question as to the direction in which he was set. Furthermore, it seemed not to disturb him that some felt torn up and anxious. To him it was a highly creative time-all a part of breaking up camp and moving toward the Lord who waited outside the camp. "To be a disciple," he explained, "is to share in the life of which the Cross is the culmination. In the evolution of an individual, there is an inner work to be done, and that is always costly." In his preaching and in his conversation he was reminding his own little band that the call of God was a call to create a new kind of community that would be distinguished by its humanness. It would be so human that those in it would do whatever was needed so that everyone in the world might be free. He was reissuing the call to which we had first made response. Later he was to tell the moderators of newly formed mission groups, "A time comes in the life of every group when it loses sight of its goals and must choose them again. Your job will be to sound again the call, to be the bearer of the vision-articulating it in your own life and helping others to see it."
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