Missionary Community …

I found this quote thought-provoking,

Jesus selected and prepared the company of twelve disciples as the prefiguration of the people of God, the continuation and extension of Israel as God’s witness to the nations. The resurrected Lord encountered his confused disciples in Galilee and continued their formation into a “missionary community,” a “sent out people,” whose apostolic ministry would become possible when the Spirit came upon them, when the promised Paraclete entered into their midst. Their transition from discipleship to apostolate was Jesus’ intention in his formation of the church as the community which was “to prolong the logic of his own ministry in an imaginative and creative way amid historical circumstances that were in many respects new and different.” This strong sense of Jesus’ preparation of the early church for its mission pervades all four Gospels. It is clearly stated in the earliest Gospel when Jesus calls the twelve, “whom he also name apostles, to be with him, and to be sent out to proclaim the messgae, and to have authority to cast out demons” (Mark 3:13-14). It is the dominanat theme of the latest Gospel: “As the Father hath sent me, so I send you” (John 20:21; “sending” = “mission”). (The Continuing Conversion of the Church, Guder, p.50)