Foundations for Christian Mission, Mentor's Guide, MG04

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F O U N D A T I O N S F O R C H R I S T I A N M I S S I O N

Again, the strategy of the excellent mentoring of a class session has everything to do with whether or not the mentor understands the objectives that s/he has for the learning period, and whether or not they are able to apply them in the midst of the learning experience. Your success as a mentor will be directly proportional to your ability to understand your objectives, and then to ensure that everything discussed, done, and experienced in the class session relates and connects to those objectives. This is the cardinal rule of good teaching, and especially the key to facilitating an open, interesting, and helpful learning environment with your students. Do not hesitate, therefore, to discuss these objectives briefly as a start to your learning session. Draw the students’s attention to the objectives, for, in a real sense, this is the heart of your educational aim for the class period in this lesson. Everything discussed and done ought to point back to these objectives. Find ways to highlight these at every turn, to reinforce them and reiterate them as you go. This devotion focuses on the story-oriented nature of Christian faith and mission. Essentially, our faith is grounded in the story of God’s determination to resolve the sin and rebellion problem which occurred at the beginning of his creative work, and extends into the present day. It reads like a grand epic, a tale of betrayal, promise, loyalty, and hope. In every sense, the vision of Christian redemption is a story of God’s great love for his creation, the Son’s great love for the Father and the amazing humility and obedience that would lead the Son to the cross for the salvation of the world. Mission is intimately tied to this story, to embracing it as history, to proclaiming it as Gospel, and to obeying it as calling. J. I. Packer offers a nice summary of mission which highlights its connection to the witness and embodiment of the story of God: Mission is from the Latin missio , which means “sending.” The words Jesus spoke to his first disciples in their representative capacity, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20.21; cf. 17.18), still apply. The universal Church, and therefore every local congregation and every Christian in it, is sent into the world to fulfill a definite, defined task. Jesus, the Church’s Lord, has issued marching orders. Individually and corporately, all God’s people are now in the world on the king’s

2 Page 13 Lesson Objectives

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