Last week, in the first message of our pre-missions conference mini-series, “A tale of two seas,” we reflected on the fact that in spreading the good news, churches are frequently either like the Sea of Galilee, which is teeming with life because it has both an inlet and an outlet, or, they’re like the Dead Sea, which has nothing living in it, because it’s become oversaturated with salt, due to the fact that it only has water flowing into it. We also noted, that if ever there were churches that were Sea of Galilee type churches, it was the Macedonian churches i.e., Philippi, Berea, and Thessalonica, as well as Antioch of Syria. All these churches were teeming with life because they had a number of defining characteristics, one of which was that they were OUTWARD LOOKING. That implied three things about them – they were gospel bearers (a church with evangelistic fervour), mission sharers (a church with a heart for missions) , and generous carers (a church with open hands). We looked at the first of those last week, and we’ll be focusing on the second this week.