by Joel Comiskey, winter 2019
Without food and water a person can only live for a few weeks. One official study concluded that a person could survive only 8 to 21 days without food and water. So is there anything more important than food and water? Air. Without oxygen, a person can only last about three minutes. In other words, oxygen is more important than food and water for human survival.
How does this relate to the cell church? The food and water of the cell church is coaching, equipping, celebration, and the cell. These four nourish the cell system and keep things flourishing.
But there are two aspects even more important: prayer and missions. I believe that prayer and missions are the air of cell church ministry. They go beyond cell church and are a lot like the air we breathe. Without them, the true church of Jesus Christ becomes more of a club than a living, breathing organism.
This month on the JCG blog, we’ve been talking about missions in the cell church. The vision for missions gives the cell church the reason for existence, to make disciples of all people groups. When Jesus gave the great commission in Matthew 28:18-20, he was not simply telling the twelve to grow deeper and deeper in their spiritual journey. Rather, he wanted them to make disciples of all the peoples of the earth (and in the process, they would also becoming more like Jesus). And the book of Acts tells us where: Jerusalem, Judea, and the uttermost part of the earth (Acts 1:8).
The beauty of the cell church is that it connects missions to both cell and celebration, rather than simply a program called “missions.” What are your cells doing to pray for unreached people groups? How are you relating missions in the celebration service? Sometimes we only focus on local outreach, which is good and right, but our goal for October on this JCG blog is to stretch our thinking and to discover new ways to engage in God’s great missionary outreach to the ends of the earth.
Recently, I watched an excellent video about multiplying cell groups in Iran called “Sheep among Wolves” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=9SAPOLKF59U). I became very excited about God’s work worldwide and how God is bigger than Islam or human religions. Could you show portions of this video in your cell group?
Operation World (http://www.operationworld.org/) provides daily prayer requests for all nations of the world. Could you use these requests during the witness time in your cell group?
Jehovah is a missionary God. Think of prayer and missions as the air of the cell church. We can’t get enough of them. We need them to breathe and fulfill God’s purpose.