5-28-26 - The Great Co-Mission

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Jesus says, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Christians reply, “Okay, we have our orders - here we go to save some souls!” And there the church has gone, for over 2,000 years, carrying the Good News to the ends of the earth. In the late 1970s my church in New York held a multi-day preaching revival mission, keynoted by a Ugandan bishop, Festo Kavingere, come to save the souls of secular New Yorkers. The ends of the earth (from our Western perspective, anyway…) had come to us. The Great Commission is our job.

Yet when we understand God’s mission as a job, an order to follow, we lose sight of perhaps the most important word: “Co.” Co-mission means mission with. Jesus never intended his followers to take the hand-off from him and run with the ball on our own. He promised His Spirit would be in us, confirming the power of our words in signs and wonders. When the Great Commission runs off the rails it’s usually because the “co” got dropped and it became just mission. Our mission. My mission.

Co-mission means we are always partners in God’s mission, not recruiting God as a silent partner to bless our missions. When we are partners in God’s mission, we can be sure that we’re in God’s will and that good fruit is promised. God is always creating new life, restoring wholeness – so we can be sure God always has a mission for us to join. God seems, in fact, to rely on our joining in, or that thing doesn’t get accomplished. It’s like an electrical current needing a conductor to carry it – we’re the wire, folks, literally wired in to what God has already purposed.

How do we know when it’s God’s mission? It will resemble Christ’s missions. Look around you: Where do you see energy and passion that result in people being blessed, healed, fed, reconciled? There’s God’s mission. Where do you see hunger, fear, injustice or oppression? God may be inviting you to join God there.

Where do you see needs, frustration, wheels spinning? Maybe that’s a place where mission is being undertaken without God, like a wire disconnected from the current. Sometimes much of what I spend my time and energy on does not feel like God’s mission at all, but rather my attempt to help prop up old conveyor belts for human mission initiatives, my own included.

God’s mission is not about meeting needs, though needs are often met as we go about God’s mission. God’s mission is about bringing life to things that are dead or on their way there. God’s mission is about freedom and peace. We are about God’s mission when we feel our sails full of Holy Spirit wind; when we don’t know the route but know we’re going somewhere blessed.

• When do you feel you are “co-missioning” with God rather than “missioning” on your own? 
• When do you feel your passion and energy rise in ministry? Start noticing what gets your attention, and when your energy intensifies when you're taking about something. That's always a clue. 
• You might ask God to wire you into a mission, large or small – and to give you a clue that’s what’s happening by letting you see some fruit.

If God is always on the move, and if God needs us to carry the current of what God wants to accomplish… think how often God may want us just to show up and say, “Here I am. Use me.” That’s the Greatest Co-mission of all.

© Kate Heichler, 2026. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for next Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.