Casting Vision in a 100-year-old church

     At the end of October, one of the churches I serve held a Vision Workshop. We welcomed a guest presenter, to teach us and guide us in prayer. He helped us get a sense of what God is calling us to do and be in our local community. I was impressed by the conversations our church was having. One group of folks could see us reaching 770 people in the next 3-5 years, another group was more conservative at 300 people (which is still 3 times our regular attendance right now). I'm not sure even I fully understand the changes we'd need to undertake in order to get there from here, but it is always fun to dream and discern what God is calling us to.
      Out of that workshop came several drafts of a vision statement. The first rough draft came from a group of about 6 of us. The many drafts after that were a product of my praying and thoughtful reflection. Through all of it, I saw a few areas of focus rise to the top:

• outward-focused, missional - we are called to serve people who aren't already a part of our church
• future generations - we are within eyesight (3 miles or less) of a college campus, and the demographic studies we looked at showed an increase in the population of families with young children.
• building new relationships - we are willing to invest in long term relationships with people
• experiencing God brings changed lives

We pieced together drafts of the Vision based on those areas. I'm still not really sure I'm 100% right-on to God's call for our church, but closer. Here it is:

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"Our vision is to bring hope to our local community by building new relationships so that future generations will experience God and become followers of Jesus Christ."

What do you think? On one hand, it seems small compared to the great big God that we serve, on another hand, it's going to take a lot for our church to get there from here--nothing short of a miracle.

Then, I stumble upon a blog post by J.R. Miller that talks about Vision: http://www.morethancake.org/archives/1470. I like his reminder to focus on God as the leader and primary vision-caster for the church. It is easy to get dragged into a man-made business model of church. God's vision of a new creation is so much more compelling than having an organization full of people. Whether it's 770 people, 300, 150, or 5, all I really long for is to see The New Creation (Revelation 21 & 22) in my life and yours, and I want to be a part of God's activity, making The New Creation here in this time and place. So I guess this Vision Statement is simply an attempt to put into words what it would look like when our church is doing that--participating with God in The New Creation.