The schedule for the final morning of the 2024 National Convention included a message from retiring national director Don Morris. Other business and discussion went longer than scheduled, prompting Morris to forgo his message. A similar set of circumstances two years ago meant that delegates hadn’t heard from Morris since the 2018 convention; the 2020 convention was held online in the form of four webinars, opening and closing sessions and a business session when the in-person event was cancelled due to COVID-19.
In his message this summer, Morris tells the CL he planned to echo much of what he wrote in his final column for the July/August issue. Morris shares the outline for his final message here.
As I have been praying over the past four or five months about what I would say in this message, I wrestled and wrestled. It wasn’t clear until about a week ago. God kept bringing it back to the obvious: He wants us to be salt and light.
I kept coming back to that which has been my passion in ministry for the past 35 years. It’s what I wrote in my last Christian Leader column and what I still believe must be the fundamental passionate purpose of every USMB church and individual believer: We must be radically on mission for Jesus.
We cannot allow our churches to simply be social clubs. We cannot allow our churches to experience a lack of urgency for reaching those who don’t yet know Jesus. Time is of the essence. We must, right now, be radically on mission for Jesus.
The people of the U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches: radically on fire for Jesus. How I pray for that.
I believe that churches that consistently and frequently pray fervently for God to use them in a powerful way for making new, committed followers of Jesus—churches that consistently pray this again and again and again—will unswervingly find themselves “on fire for Jesus.” Otherwise, I think we will simply be just another church.
We must be on our knees, asking God what he wants us to do, how we can join him.
Our church or elder boards will spend a lot of time in prayer, not just short prayers to get a meeting started.
We will be churches that provide opportunities for people to fast together. Churches that hold numerous prayer and worship gatherings, praying out loud, asking God for what he wants to do through them.
We will find ourselves doing things that are only possible through the power of God. We’ll be radically on mission for Jesus.
The people of the U.S. Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches: radically on fire for Jesus. How I pray for that.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is still very good news.
The amazing and powerful things that we—we who believe and know about having a deep relationship with the risen Jesus—know are possible for those who are yet to believe.
But without someone to tell them, they will perish.
Without churches that are striving to teach people how to reach people, without each of us telling our story of life transformation through Jesus, there will be multitudes of people who end up facing an eternity apart from God.
Jesus tells us people are lost. “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost,” (Luke 19:10).
I can tell them how God has changed me and has adopted me as his son (or daughter) and that he has forgiven my sin and restored my relationship with him. How did God do this? By sacrificially taking my place on the cross, atoning for my and your sins.
I am forgiven. I am justified. I am his, having placed my faith in him.
That is my mission. That is your mission. That is USMB’s mission.
Then, being there to help disciple and mentor those new believers into becoming deeply committed followers of Jesus. That is also a huge part of our mission.
Dare we ask for a revival among our MB family? Dare we ask God for more? Dare we stop this nonsense of squabbling among ourselves so that we can do the real work he is calling us to? Dare we stop wasting time, being so slow to act? Dare we desire to live faithfully different—being salt and light in a world that has largely rejected the light of Jesus? Dare we understand that living radically for Jesus might literally be worth living for? Being persecuted for? Dying for?
I think about the great scene depicted in Revelation 7, “a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb.”
When I think about that, I also think about those whom I know right now who will not be there. Does that matter enough to me? Do I care enough to strive to help change that outcome?
God invited me to look you in the eyes and to ask: Are we willing to be radically on mission for Jesus? Are we willing to seek him over and over again—on our knees? Are we willing to truly be salt and light even in this age?
Don Morris is the USMB national director. He and his wife, Janna, live in Edmond, Oklahoma, where they attend Cross Timbers Church.
