The church is always on the move, equipping and mobilizing for mission and service into the world. The purpose of the reflections, analysis, and opinions of this website is to encourage the church to …
move out. You are the church in 100% of your life; therefore, living your life as an intentionally “Christian” life beyond the walls of the church building is the best way to grow the church, the body of Christ. How you live beyond the walls of the church is what will bring people into the church, the body of Christ, more than any building-oriented program or ministry.
move on. You are the church in a particular time frame of Christian and world history; therefore, live your life with humble respect for past triumphs, tragedies, and ways of understanding the world and God. With such humility you can inhabit the present moment as a means of grace for transforming current human injustices and dislocations for God’s purposes of repentance and reconciliation. You are always moving on in the process of your faith journey into the future.
move over. You are finite, imperfect, and incomplete on this side of life; therefore, God is leading you to discern when and how you may need to move out of the way so that God’s grand purposes can be fulfilled in the unfolding of creation to its culmination. In a Wesleyan understanding of your faith journey you are “going on to perfection,” and that implies you are not there yet.
Itinerant Church is managed by United Methodist pastor Chris Walters.
Encouragement for Methodists:
Itinerant: “traveling from place to place” (Merriam-Webster). Methodists know this word, “itinerant,” because their pastors are itinerant, moving from church to church according to the appointment system. Itinerant pastors move from place to place because they are called to lead the whole church to move from place to place in ministry.
Jesus said God sent him to the world and that he sent the church to the world.
- “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
- “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18).
- “As the Father has sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21).
God sent Jesus Christ to the world, and as the body of Christ on earth, the church is the continual sending forth of Christ to the world, “empowered by the Holy Spirit.” The United Methodist Church teaches about the “Nurture and Mission of the Church” that for “Wesley there is no religion but social religion, no holiness but social holiness. The communal forms of faith in the Wesleyan tradition not only promote personal growth; they also equip and mobilize us for mission and service to the world.”
Methodism is a worldwide movement that has a deep and rich history of sending both clergy and laity and then going out “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”
Therefore, by definition, the church is itinerant.
