How many times each day do you reach for your smartphone? Do you know how many hours each day you spend on it?
It’s easy to get that kind of information and it’s an interesting exercise. Just ask a search engine how you can find the information in relation to your particular device.
So many of our daily activities now involve reaching for a smartphone. It’s like an extra limb for many of us.
But your phone and the apps installed on it are only a means to an end. The power of your device, or any technology you use, is in what it helps you do. Our smartphones help us connect with the world in significant ways.
Social media, ride-sharing, neighborhood chat and even banking apps would be pretty useless if they did not connect us with other people. Even apps not specifically designed to connect us to another human take on greater significance when others join us in using them.
Take your reading app for example. It probably has a feature allowing you to share things you’ve highlighted. And you can leave comments and ratings in your podcast app.
One of the tools we use the most is the simple Notesapp. Every time we meet a new person or learn something new about a friend, we note it in our phones. This is something we only connect with each other on, but it allows us to remember names and events that are significant to the people we know and meet. And this helps us in our mutual journey of building a stronger community.
An app designed to build faith in community
Facebook, Twitter and most other social media apps would be pretty boring without any friends to share the experience with.
If you’ve been using the MissionHub app for a while now, you know one of the best things about it is the way it helps you build community.
Are there other Christians who have shown interest in the way you live your life? Maybe they’re ready to move out of their comfort zone a bit.
Are there people in your neighborhood or your workplace who have been slowly moving closer to Jesus as a result of his work through you? Maybe they’re ready to learn more and take the next step.
And MissionHub can help in both of these cases.
MissionHub really fulfills its potential when you invite others to join you on your mission of sharing your faith with friends, neighbors and co-workers. This is why MissionHub created the “Groups” feature.
God made us to live in community. As Christians living on mission, we do ourselves a great disservice when we forget this.
Whether you want to join forces with a few friends, your small group, or your whole church, MissionHub Groups help you achieve your faith goals.
When taking steps of faith starts becoming normal
Imagine if every time you attended your church or small group, there was a time set aside to celebrate the steps of faith people in your community took in the last seven days.
Some of them might sound huge and scary, while others would represent people just getting started in living on mission.
One person might describe inviting a new neighbor over for coffee. Another could mention asking a colleague why they appear to have negative feelings about spirituality.
The effect of regularly hearing about people taking steps of faith — large, small and in-between — is that everyone in your community hopefully hears something they can learn from or try in the week to come.
Picture being part of a community of believers who love the people they live, work and play alongside. As you start taking steps of faith together you paint a fuller picture of what it looks like to trust God. Taking steps of faith no longer feels like something for the few. It starts becoming the norm.
Now you can join with like-minded people using MissionHub Communities to share the load of living on mission. You do this in very practical ways, including:
- Creating goals together.
- Encouraging each other to persevere.
- Celebrating every breakthrough together.
In a MissionHub Community you learn together how to help people get to know Jesus.
Who will join you in Communities?
When we first started embracing the missional lifestyle, we felt like we did not have much of a support system. Most of our Christian friends were content with the way they had always lived out their faith. They did not want to join us in the mission we were envisioning.
So, we looked elsewhere to find people who were living the way we aspired to live. Most of the people who fit that description did not live near us.
Maybe you have a group of people in your neighborhood who are on mission with you. That’s fantastic. MissionHub can provide you with a way of staying connected even more than you already are.
Or maybe, like us, you need to form a group with people beyond your immediate surroundings. The connection to other people provided by our smartphones now enables us to live on mission with other Christians, regardless of where they live.
You can form a MissionHub Community with people who will support you in taking steps of faith with your friends, neighbors and co-workers — whether or not your Community ever meets them personally.
Taking steps of faith in community makes much more sense than trying to form the habit alone.
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Photo by Duy Pham