This week, I found myself around a table of about a dozen faithful people gathered together by a local church that wishes to find a way to live more fully into mission work.

Turns out that in recent years the church leaders asked their congregation to help envision what the church’s next 10 years were to look like. And overwhelmingly the answer came back: We want to be known for our mission work.

Excellent news! … Right?

Indeed it is, but I also couldn’t help but note that it produced mixed emotions for me.

As the director of a large faith-based nonprofit that shelters the unhoused, feeds the hungry and puts clothes on the backs of those who need it, learning that a large, urban church wants to send its masses out into the mission field thrills me.

Now, imagine if every church vowed such a commitment!

But, wait. Hmmmmm. … I also can’t stifle the inner voice that begs the question: Isn’t that supposed to be the point anyway?

A disclosure just between you and I: I am not the pastor I used to be. And I’ll let the people in my congregation and those who we serve at our mission decide the merits of my transformation.

But 20 percent of my pastoral career has now been spent being changed by the least among us as Jesus names our neighbors on the margins. And during those years, I’m grateful that my home congregation has fully supported me.

And the thing that I have learned in the last two years of pastoral evolution is that as faithful people, the entire point really … is the work that we do out there.

Many of us love our faith communities. My small, rural church stacks up as beautiful as they come. Sunday mornings there are a celebration of joy and neighborliness, and Wednesday nights with our youth fill my cup.

Maybe you feel the same.

However, if that’s where we are leaving our faith, at the double doors as we exit the church, then we are truly missing Jesus’ point.

Friends, we are now past Easter Sunday. We barreled through the church year; the baby Jesus was born; and now he is the risen Christ. But unfortunately, for far too many of us that is where faith ends. … Hit the snooze button. Thank you, we’ll see you again in the fall.

We totally forget that Jesus’ resurrection was the beginning, not the end of the story.

Friends … if we consider ourselves to be Easter people, then going into the mission field should be the point of our faith, not just an afterthought. Otherwise, Jesus would never have left the tomb. Amen.

Devlyn Brooks is the CEO of Churches United in Moorhead, Minn., and an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America serving Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn. He blogs about faith at findingfaithin.com, and can be reached at devlynbrooks@gmail.com.