We want to see ourselves living missionally in every part of our lives.

We want everyone in our congregation to clearly see the way God is at work in their lives.

We want everyone to have their eyes opened to one another and the variety of ways our members are already living out the mission of God.

We want each of us to have opportunities to take steps to make the mission of God more clearly present in our lives.

What is Missional Living?

“Missional Living” is a focus to bring us all into a greater awareness of where and how we can increase our outreach and disciple making efforts. The graphic to the right illustrates this concept. Building on our strengths of worship and the study of God’s Word, we are poised to increase our disciple making outreach through various avenues of service:
  1. Personal Life Situations
  2. Neighborhood / Community
  3. Around the World
The opportunities to serve abound, and here at COS we are already engaged in many. And now is the opportunity to live out the mission of service that we are given as Christians by “going further” as God directs us.

What does Missional Living look like?

The mission of God is what COS has been about, and we want to focus on how God is continuing to accomplish that mission in us today. With that in mind, we have some intentional work ahead of us to make this theme of “Missional Living” more present in our church activities, teaching, preaching, and conversations. 

Much of the work to be done could be put into these three categories:

  1. Curriculum around the topic of mission that will train our members in the theology and living-out of the missional life.
  2. Programs that help us see each other’s various examples of missional living as well as aligning our current calendar to better make room for what we hope to be impactful events and opportunities to grow in our mission. That includes our large-scale calendar as well as our staff’s personal calendars as needed.
  3. Leadership involvement to communicate our goals effectively with one another and create what teams of people will be necessary for us to carry these things out.
It’s God's church. It’s God's mission. And it’s God’s calling to each of us that invites us to be a part of it. It is my desire that all of us would grow in our love for Jesus while we grow in our missional living.

What are the needs in our community?

On June 6, 2024, we invited members of the congregation to a Missional Living Workshop. Over 60 congregation members gathered to brainstorm on areas of need for our congregation to address. Those in attendance included members of church staff, Council, Board of Elders, and members-at-large from the congregation.

And collect we did…we ended up with 25 need areas identified that addressed needs here at COS, within the community here in Livonia and SE Michigan, and across the world. As a final exercise the group voted on which ideas they felt were “top of the list” for COS to consider addressing as a top priority.
List of Ideas
The  next step is to analyze these results to determine what needs COS can begin addressing as a church body. The Missional Living Planning Team has already started work on this analysis, and we expect to have some specific next steps determined in the next few weeks. Stay tuned for more information to come out later this summer, and stay curious about the needs of our community in the meantime! This workshop might be over, but the needs of our neighbor are not! What struggles are being experienced by the people around you? And how is God preparing you to respond to them?

Sermon Series

To highlight the topic of Missional Living, our Pastors started a 4-part sermon series, entitled "God at Work: Pictures of God's Mission".  Immediately before He ascended back into Heaven, Jesus gathered His disciples and gave them a charge that we often call “The Great Commission”-- Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing and teaching them. With these words, Jesus invited His disciples to carry on His mission, but this wasn’t the first time Jesus taught about the mission of God. In fact, His teaching is full of not only commands and charges to follow Him on this mission, but images and metaphors that invite all disciples of Christ to imagine what it looks like for God to be at work in this world. In this series, we disciples of Jesus in the 21st-century will revisit a few of these images from Christ and take them to heart as pictures of the life and mission God is calling us to today.
Sermon: Fishers of Men
Sep 29, 2024  •  Rev. Dean M. Davenport
Sermon: Salt & Light
Sep 22, 2024  •  Rev. Joel A. Werner
Sermon: Vine & Branches
Sep 15, 2024  •  Rev. Dean M. Davenport
Sermon: Making Disciples
Sep 8, 2024  •  Rev. Joel A. Werner