The United Methodist Church names its mission plainly: to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Its vision puts feet on that mission through three words that can be remembered and lived: love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously. A mission statement cannot just be a bunch of words, because mission is action. The church can talk a good game about God loving everybody and caring for the poor, but faith has to move beyond sitting in pews and coaching from an armchair.
Radical inclusion gives “love boldly” its real meaning. John Wesley saw people being left out of the Church of England, and he went out to the people instead of waiting for the people to come in. John Wesley preached in streets, held camp revivals, started schools and hospitals, and shared the good news that God’s grace is for all. The command to love a neighbor does not say to love only people from the same political party, people who look alike, or people who think alike. The word “neighbor” means all.
Jesus shows that kind of love by refusing to stay only with religious leaders and respectable people. Jesus eats with sinners, welcomes outsiders, and invites everybody into his love, life, and mission. Glide Memorial Church gives a picture of that bold love, where corporate leaders and homeless people who slept in the pews sit together in worship. The church becomes most like Christ when there is room for people who do not look, live, or carry themselves like everybody else.
The communion table in *Places in the Heart* gives another picture of the same grace. God’s table brings together the sheriff and the boy who accidentally killed him, the men of the Ku Klux Klan and the black man they harmed, the blind man, and the rest of the broken community. God’s love, grace, and table remain open because Christ does not divide people into the worthy and the unworthy.
The little girl’s Valentine box brings the point home. Her empty box looks like rejection to her mother, but the girl rejoices because she had not forgotten one person in her class. God’s love is like that: not one is forgotten. Love boldly means believing that God loves the person who has messed up, the person who seems impossible to love, and the person who has been pushed to the edge. God does not forget not one.
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Key Takeaways
- 1. Mission means action, not just words [39:48] Mission cannot remain a carefully written statement that people repeat and then set aside. Faith becomes real when love, service, and courage take visible shape in ordinary life. The church loses its witness when it says the right things but never goes and does anything with what it claims to believe. [39:48]
- 2. Neighbor means more than people like us [44:32] Jesus does not limit love to familiar people, agreeable people, or people who fit comfortably into a certain group. Neighbor-love reaches across politics, class, race, habits, and personal history. God’s command confronts every attempt to make love selective. [44:32]
- 3. Jesus welcomed those others excluded [45:17] Jesus did not build his life around staying safe among religiously approved people. His love moved toward sinners, outsiders, and people whose presence made respectable folks uncomfortable. Christ’s people cannot claim his name while treating welcome as a privilege for only certain kinds of people. [45:17]
- 4. God’s table brings enemies together [50:28] Communion declares that grace is bigger than the lines people draw around themselves. God’s table does not deny sin or harm, but it announces that Christ can gather broken people where hatred once ruled. Reconciliation begins when God’s grace is allowed to be wider than human resentment. [50:28]
- 5. God forgets not one person [54:48] The little girl’s joy came from remembering every classmate, even though nobody had remembered her. God’s love carries that same holy attention toward every wounded, difficult, lonely, and forgotten person. Bold love refuses to treat anyone as disposable because God does not forget not one.
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