Like beaver dams, churches and the people who fill them are to have a filter quality to them, taking the ash that poisons the water of this world and gracefully settling it to the ground so that pure water may spring forth on the other side. We are safe havens from death and destruction, from nihilism and vain humanism—but we are not simply a fortress that “takes in refugees,” we also “send out.”

Mentors whom we look up to can help guide us as we navigate different relationships and situations. The willingness to be coachable is one of the most underrated values of adults.

So, what is mission? It is sharing in the work of Jesus for the sake of the world by the power of his Holy Spirit. It is Jesus’ work that we are invited into. Lesslie Newbigin, a great 20th-century Anglican missionary, puts it in a more memorable way: “The church is a pilgrim people on its way to the ends of the earth and the end of time.”