My twitter handle is TheMissionalist, set up back when I was a part of a group of UUs who were following along with the missional movement in Christianity and knew that many of its goals matched ours. (Live Oak’s former minister, Rev. Chuck Freeman, was also part of this coterie of rabble-rousers).

Missionalism is, at its core, a statement that why we are here, as religious people, is to DO things. Not just to talk about them, not just to enjoy being in community, but to take action. Though the originators of this religious thinking were Christians, it intersects with our Unitarian Universalist theology, and in many ways, is simply an extension of what has always been the core of our faith – deeds, not creeds.

The heart of missionalism for Unitarian Universalists, in my opinion, is to build Beloved Community. Beloved Community is not the community we make at Live Oak, it extends far past that. It is the creation of a world where all people get what they need, where they are not oppressed, where justice and equity happen.

We know we’re not there yet. Where do we begin?

A question I keep coming back to is one that we discussed frequently, in my missional days. “Who does your heart break for?” We know we cannot solve all of the problems. So where do our hearts pull us toward?

It is easy for this question to lead us in 200 different directions, as each of us may find our hearts break in different ways. But if we use this question as a starting point to discussing where we, as a congregation, can work together and do the most good, we will have the benefit of not just having our minds and hands in this great work, but our hearts, too.