First is the question of whether the first is the Church gathered or the Church scattered. We have become accustomed to thinking (wrongly, of course) of the Church as a voluntary association. There are scattered Christians out there who elect to come together for common good and benefit. In other words, the Church is the creation of the people, the reflection of their will and desire to practice their worship, or at least part of it, in common. Now, mind you, it is not essential to have the Church gathered. The Church scattered, in this view, can exist just fine on their own without the Church gathered. Talk to any lapsed Christian who has stopped participating in the worship life of the Church gathered and you will find them expressing such an idea.
Lutherans, the good evangelical catholics that they are, insist that there is no Church scattered without first the Church gathered. Faith is born from what is heard, from the splash of water in baptism, and the voice of Christ in the Gospel. This happens in the Church gathered. Working through the means of grace, God calls, gathers, sanctifies, and enlightens His Church. We are not accidental Christians but those whom God has called through the living voice of His Word, in whim the Spirit has worked to break through our closed hearts to bring us to faith, and incorporated us into the Body of Christ through our baptism into His death and resurrection. This faith lives because it is fed and nourished by the Word of the Lord purely preached, the Law in its thorny prick and the Gospel's sweet, healing balm, and because the Sacrament of Christ's body and blood is set among us, a feast in the midst of our enemies.
For there to be a Church scattered, there must first be the Church gathered. But the Church does not only live where she is gathered. We are the called and gathered, to be sure, but we are also the sent. The apostolic mandate is to go, witness, intercede, serve, and do the works of mercy done to you in Christ. The Church scattered is when the worship continues as God's baptized people head out the door into home, workplace, neighborhood, and community. They do not cease to be the baptized when they leave the Lord's House; in fact, this is the primary place where their baptismal vocation of worship, witness, service, and mercy works happen. All this Lutheran talk about vocation is really about worship, begun in the Church gathered, and continued and extended in the Church scattered throughout the world.
That is the next point. Vocation is not some different calling from the call to worship but the different venues where that worship takes place, from the gathered Church around the Word and Table of the Lord into the world where we are scattered deliberately by God and sent forth to do His bidding in our daily lives. We live the high and noble calling of the baptismal life primarily through the relationships in which we live, work, and have our leisure. This, for Lutherans, is reflected in the Table of Duties (the vocation part of the Small Catechism). Being husband to wife or wife to husband is not some secular relationship sealed by a paper issued by the state. It is the primary domain in which we live out our baptismal life as the children of God. Part of our worship, if you will, is to love our spouses and serve them in love in Christ's name. And then to children and parents, workplace and employer and employees, neighborhood and community, citizenship and stewardship... these are all the different venues in which what was begun in the Church gathered is continued by God's design and providential will.
He gives to us His very self in the Word and the Sacraments. He gives to us the means to receive and respond to this rich and blessed treasure of grace and mercy. He gives us the resources and opportunities to continue to respond to His grace and favor in the world. He gives us the circumstance and the challenge of living as His children, in but not of the world, not merely enduring but living out fully the life begun in us in our baptism into Christ. This to is worship, the continuation in different places what God Himself begun in the one place where He called, gathered, sanctified, and enlightened us to faith and life in Christ.
[As much talk as we do about stewardship, perhaps the real issue is not how much to give but how to see what happens Monday through Saturday as worship, the Church scattered continuing what God began when we were bidden come to His Word and water and table. Just a practical thought from a guy who thinks about this kind of stuff.]
Missions are not optional to the Church because they are the inevitable result of God scattering the Church throughout the world, starting in the neighborhood but extending over ocean and continent. So, as Bro. Weedon has put it, "as I once heard at an Orthodox commissioning of a missionary: “Take the worship of the true God into all the world!” The Gospel frees us from our idolatries and enables that whole life worship, where all is referred in thanks to the Father in the Son and by the Holy Spirit. Life becomes a Gloria Patri.”
Or, to use Martin Franzmann's wonderful poetry:
O Spirit, who didst once restore
Thy church that it might be again the bringer of good news to men,
Breathe on Thy cloven Church once more,
That in these gray and latter days
There may be those whose life is praise, each life a high doxology
To Father, Son and unto Thee.
Just a few random, meandering, pastoral thoughts that began from a couple of words read somewhere. . .
as
I once heard at an Orthodox commissioning of a missionary: “Take the
worship of the true God into all the world!” The Gospel frees us from
our idolatries and enables that whole life worship, where all is
referred in thanks to the Father in the Son and by the Holy Spirit. Life
becomes a Gloria Patri.” - See more at:
http://cyberbrethren.com/#sthash.WpCTgg0P.dpuf
as
I once heard at an Orthodox commissioning of a missionary: “Take the
worship of the true God into all the world!” The Gospel frees us from
our idolatries and enables that whole life worship, where all is
referred in thanks to the Father in the Son and by the Holy Spirit. Life
becomes a Gloria Patri.” - See more at:
http://cyberbrethren.com/#sthash.WpCTgg0P.dpuf
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