Serve the City

Four times a year the Alton Mission worship service becomes more service than worship (or perhaps worship through service). We cancel our normal Sunday morning activities and go out into the city to create, restore, encourage, pray, and generally love our neighbors. Here are the typical things we do:

Winter: On Martin Luther King Jr. weekend we partner with other organizations like Aces 4 Youth to serve our city and work for peace and reconciliation. The local chapter of the NAACP along with several of the historically black churches in town lead a commemoration service in Dr. King’s honor on Sunday afternoon.

Spring: Alton has citywide litter cleanups in the spring and the fall, so we join them in picking up trash, planting flowers, and improving the appearance of our city.

Summer: We take a Sunday to serve our city through prayer. We walk neighborhoods together as families and friends, praying as we go. We’ve sat together and prayed, “Lord, help us to see what you see.” We’ve gone out to take pictures in order to capture the soul of our city and express our gratitude and need to God.

Fall: The first Sunday of October is World Communion Sunday and a growing number of local churches partner together to serve the city. We meet for a brief communion service and then split up into work teams that go all around the area to complete projects and partner with local organizations. Then we gather that night to eat and celebrate.

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Restore Communities

“Come to church” is no longer good news to most of our neighbors in Alton. So the mantra of the Alton Mission is not “Come think about Jesus like us,” but “Go be Jesus to them.” Our approach is missional (“Go”) and incarnational (“Be Jesus”), so we organize ourselves into Restore Communities that plant themselves around our city so we can dwell among our neighbors. (We chose the name in part to acknowledge the influence of and connection to Austin New Church.)

The Restore Community is our primary expression of what it means to be the church, so each community is called to love God, love one another, and love neighbor. Where communion, community, and mission integrate, the kingdom of God draws near.

Each community creates a covenant in which we commit our lives to one another, not just our time or money or services. The covenant names the particular calling we’ve discerned from God–who we’re called to bless, how we’ll live out the gospel together, and who is going to lead. This becomes the basis for accountability and also aids in decision making. [link to more information about the covenant coming soon!]

A typical Restore Community meets twice a month for a community gathering in which they connect with one another, study Scripture, pray, and celebrate communion. The two other weeks in the month are focused outward, participating in what God is doing in the lives of neighbors. Most communities choose an organization to partner with in order to serve each month, but we also like to throw parties and just hang out with our neighbors.

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Alton Mission Worship

Our Restore Communities gather for worship every Sunday at 10:30am at the YWCA in Alton (304 E 3rd St.).

Perhaps you’re asking, “What do you do?” To which we like to reply, “Snake handling and interpretive dance.” But since that’s not helpful, here’s the real answer. Our calling is incarnational mission, which means, “Go be Jesus to Alton.” The worship gathering equips us for our calling by forming us into Christ’s body and then sending us into the city to bless our neighbors.

So the first and most important answer to the question, “What do you do?” is this: “We let God work in us.”

Being formed into Christ’s body is not a human accomplishment, it is an act of God. What God does is most important, and our side of the work is participating in the activity of his Holy Spirit.

We are not just a community that takes the sacraments, we are a sacramental community. It’s not primarily about what we are doing, but what God is doing in and through us. We become a sacrament to our city, a visible sign of the invisible God. We are the body of Christ. We are the loaf of bread on the communion table. Like the communion bread, we are taken, blessed, broken, and given. Jesus brings us together, forms us in the gospel, unites us with his sacrifice, and sends us out as fresh bread for hungry souls.

Now, we get to be active participants, so there’s work for us to do. Here’s a look at what we do to participate in what God is doing:

Taken: We gather together in worship.

Focus: Belonging to Jesus and to one another.
Looks like: Singing and praying in one voice, greeting one another

Blessed: We listen to the word of God.

Focus: Believing in Jesus.
 Looks like: Testimony, scripture readings, sermon, creed, and thanksgiving

Broken: We share in the Lord’s table.

Focus: Becoming like Jesus.
Looks like: Prayer, communion, and worship.

Given: We scatter to bless our neighbors.

Focus: Becoming Jesus to our city.
Looks like: Commission, worship, and benediction.

Leading Worship Leading worship is a community effort, with Restore Communities rotating worship leading responsibilities. This entails coming early to setup and pray for the service, as well as leading prayer times, reading scripture, giving testimonies, and serving communion during the service.

We place a high value on children participating as much as possible in everything we do. But there is wisdom in not forcing a three year old to “sit” through a sermon. So we have everyone together during the singing at the beginning of the service, then at greeting time children younger than kindergarten-age go to an adjacent room. Those children come back in to take communion with us and be commissioned to go be good news.

Most of what we’ve mentioned is familiar, but here are some familiar things we don’t have:

Announcements: Since Restore Communities are the main thing, the Alton Mission is limited to weekly worship gathering, quarterly service projects, and leader development. There isn’t anything to announce, except when we shut down the worship gathering to do a service project.
Greeters or Ushers: There are no bulletins to hand out, for one. But since the worship gathering is not intended to be the place to attract new people, we expect that most new people will be coming with one of us. If other new people come, it is everyone’s responsibility to give them a gracious welcome.
Offering: We have a box people can put their tithes and offerings in, but no “pass the plates” moment. This is somewhat related to having no ushers.

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Sermons

Preaching in the Alton Mission is a community practice.

We have an amazing group of people who share the listening, studying, and preaching load together. We also believe that the whole community is active in discerning the voice of God through the Scriptures and the sermon. We therefore offer recordings of our sermons here hoping they will be helpful, but with this counsel: Listen actively and in community. The sermon loses some of its communal and sacramental character when extracted from the community-at-worship. It remains a dead relic until a community actively takes it up again.

You can subscribe to our sermons as a podcast. Here’s how to get the sermons delivered to you:

From your computer: In iTunes go to File > Subscribe to Podcast and type https://altonmission.com/category/sermons/feed/.
On your tablet or phone:
A. Click on this link https://altonmission.com/category/sermons/feed/
B. Or on your phone or tablet download and open the Podcasts app, then tap “Search” and type in https://altonmission.com/category/sermons/feed/.

Listen on our website by going to the sermon feed here: altonmission.com/sermons. (Each sermon is a separate post that goes in order from the most recent to the oldest.)

For sermon series we have already finished, it may be easier to go the sermon archives. The sermons are grouped by series and put in chronological order. For some series, there are even supporting resources.

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Kids

Almost half of the people in our community are children and youth. One of our core values is participation and from the beginning this has applied especially to the children. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to them.” And recent research tells us that segregating by age can have a negative impact on children’s formation in the faith.

We aim to include the children in everything we do: communion, community, and mission. Here’s how that looks:

Family: Every family makes spiritual practices a priority of their family life together. This is the single most important factor in whether a young adult will develop a strong personal connection to God.

Restore Community: Discipling children is a community responsibility, but it can be messy and difficult. Each community has the freedom to work out how they will disciple children and youth, asking the question, “What would a family do?” Sometimes this means changes to the structure and length of the gathering, hiring a babysitter, or the men teaching the kids while the women delve deeper into prayer and discussion (and vice versa). It also means changes in mission. Sometimes our work is slower so that the children can work with us and grow in the image of Christ with us. And sometimes the children open up new avenues of mission for us.

Alton Mission worship: Children are welcome to participate in the whole worship service. During the sermon children five and under are gathered for play and teaching, but for the rest of our time together everyone participates. This includes songs, prayers, and communion. There is no minimum age requirement for any of these community practices.

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Filed under: Front Page, What We Do

Serve the City

Restore Communities

Alton Mission Worship

Sermons

Kids

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