Is the Future Bright?

By Stacy Muñiz

Is the future bright? … The short answer: yes.

We decorate our spaces and highlight our media material with a statement of goals, focus, and mission: “To bring wholeness to the world by loving God, loving people, and multiplying followers of Jesus.”

Wholeness = Love (God + People) + Multiplication

But in order for that mission to steadily manifest as applied reality, “we the people,” at every level in the body, must harness our role in the equation.

1 Corinthians 12 gives us such beautiful insight into the plan of God for His body, the church, even in His creation of the bodily form of humanity: “But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as He wanted them to be. … As it is, there are many parts, but one body. … Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Corinthians 12:18, 20, 27).

Amplified throughout this passage of Scripture is the glaring truth that each part of the body has a necessary and essential function, without which the body cannot function in wholeness.

I recently had the honor of spending the week at the Free Methodist Church’s World Ministries Center for the famous “acronym week.” More specifically, I had the opportunity to sit in on the gatherings of denominational leadership, which included our superintendents, Board of Administration, World Ministries Center staff, and Board of Bishops.

This collaborative symposium spent time not only in training and pious deliberation, but in worship and quiet seeking of the heart of God. The goal: How can we lead, prepare, and send forth those we represent to most effectively fulfill the mission of bringing wholeness to the world?

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 “Each part of the body has a necessary and essential function, without which the body cannot function in wholeness.”

Our time included reviewing strategies, systems, contemplating restructuring approaches to revenue regeneration, sustaining our current fruitful epicenters of worship while not missing the opportunity to fulfill Jesus’ commission in Matthew 28 in hopes of adding another 86 to reach a total of at least 120 more missional centers by General Conference 2029.

The Whole Body

The beauty is that the in-depth meetings were not just an attempt to review a global hope, but to pray over and execute excellence in the fiduciary duty and call to righteously govern the body, right down to the smallest and most critical detail. If you consider this cohort of denominational leadership as the brain of the body, you understand the importance and essential cooperation of the whole body. Now that the acronym week meetings are concluded, there is the work, and that’s where the whole body comes in. We the people.

Will you do your part? Will you recognize your essential gifting to this ecclesiastical body? You might see your position as weak, but the scribe of 1 Corinthians would beg to differ. “On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. … Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Corinthians 12:22–23a, 27).

As you do your part, you contribute, even in the smallest way, to the full function of the church to accomplish the goal of bringing wholeness to the world. Your love of God leads you to love people, which can result in the transformation of a life to follow Jesus, thereby producing multiplication of disciples and bringing restorative healing of the relationship between God and humanity. Mission accomplished.

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 “Will you do your part? Will you recognize your essential gifting to this ecclesiastical body?”

As each one does his/her part, we the people, the set-apart ones, clarify and illuminate the future with the light of Christ.
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