Compiled by the Spiritual Life Team, Southeastern District-LCMS.
"Our hope is that as you and your congregation work through the 42 Bible studies, you will use the prompts and suggested activities to further immerse yourselves in prayer for the Missio Dei."
Chapter one of the Great Sending, Lessons 1 thru 7, and chapter two, Lessons 8 thru 14 - provided by one of the Book contributors, Dr. Gerhard Michael
Resource Sheets were developed by a number of different pastors in the Northeast Georgia Circuit [of the Florida-Georgia District of the LCMS]
Resources are available from Hope Lutheran Church, Orlando, Fl, who in partnership with the Florida Georgia District of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, developed them for a 2022 Great Sending Jubilee year.
A Journal that encourages Lay People to engage the 42 Bible Studies with additional questions and prayer prompts and stories. Produced by Resurrection Lutheran, Spring, TX
Visual response sheets which accompany the Great Sending Study for the participant's immersion in the 42 scriptural texts (see page 44 of the book for study help) developed by Pat Maier, Michigan District, LCMS.
The pericopes set forth the immersion in the Word of God, which is focused on The Great Sending for a JUBILEE year (2022) prepared by the Florida Georgia District, LCMS, Greg Walton, President.
The Mission Theses are based on the seminal documents, "Our Prayerful Vision for the Future," by lead author Dr. Dean Nadasdy, and "Theological Statement," by lead author Dr. Robert Newton (see Contributors), based on past gatherings of missional leaders and ad hoc conversations during missional conferences.
1. We believe, teach, and confess
that God’s mission (the Missio Dei,
which belongs to Him and His love for the world) centers in the person and work
of our Lord Jesus Christ (John 3:16-17).
1. We pray for and imagine a church shaped by hope in the Lord of the Church and the power of His Gospel.
2. We pray for and imagine a church driven by a mutual confidence in Scripture alone as the sole authority for our teaching and confession.
The vision, purpose, and activities of this "network" rest on th Biblical foundation of God's mission to reconcile the entire world to Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ. Rather than playing an adjunct role in our theology and practice, God's Mission (Missio Dei) stands at the heart of who we are as Christians and as Lutherans, confessing God's true message to the world. The Missio Dei rightly serves, then, as the primary lens through which we read the Scriptures and apply its message to ourselves and our world. In short, the Mission Dei determines our being and purpose as a Synod and our biblical confession in the world.
Good Christian works are the fruit of saving faith in Christ; Christian behavior reveals and demonstrates the heart relationship with Jesus; Christ-centered repentance produces fruits, which includes its practices. These practices, and not simply church resolutions, bylaws, programs, or just going through the motions in church planting, will reveal the misison heart of Christ in the lives of believers. ("You will know them by their fruits.")
The apostolic sending out, sending away, and being sent ones together with the corollaries of leaving and going is primarily a mind-set ("habitus," not just a "performance") and dynamic resulting in actions - a dynamic of sending and going, making the contact, the connection, creating the care culture or climate cultivation, all in order to communicate Christ - creating communities of faith and sending (the "Cs").
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
-1 John 3:16
As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.
-John 17:18
Seventeen Treatises that will amplify and accompany the essence and essentials of the book, The Great Sending: God's Heart for the World Beating Through You
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
-John 20:21-23