*Note: I wrote this five months ago and sent it to our leadership team. Our Connecting Pastor referred to it today, so I've revised it a little and shared it here. May it challenge you as it has me.
Vision is a wonderful, creative, empowering companion. It takes on an amazing identity in our lives when we pursue it and embrace it and place it front and center. It becomes a motivating force, an encouraging friend, bringing joy, passion, and purpose to our everyday existence. I thank God continually for a strong vision at The Journey - the "what" of our future as a church. It’s been hammered out over several years in prayer, dialogue, and implementation. It’s unchanging - the language may be refined, but the substance will never be altered. The Journey has a bedrock-like, unshakeable vision. We know who we are. We know where we’re going. As with any vision, the how is not entirely clear. (Only small, petty, un-worthwhile visions are constantly surrounded by predictability and absolute clarity regarding the process needed to achieve them - the big, important, worth-giving-your-life-for ones swim in a sea of mystery, uncertainty, and change.) But thank God we have a vision. We didn’t download it from someone else; we didn’t carelessly throw it together. It’s a vision born of the sovereign will of God and our sensitivity to His direction. And it’s a wonderful, creative, empowering companion.
But vision can also play the petulant child. A vision is demanding - it wants constant attention. It’s jealous - it can’t stand to be sidelined while we pursue some other, temporarily more compelling playmate. When it doesn’t feel like it’s being properly pursued and embraced and placed front and center, a vision has a tendency to run away. And it’s sneaky when it does! It doesn’t announce in a loud voice that it’s leaving. It doesn’t throw its belongings haphazardly into a duffel bag and storm out through the foyer, slamming the front door behind it. It doesn’t offer us an ultimatum, engage in a shouting match, threaten to hoof it… It just slips out its window in the night while we’re sleeping, dreaming about something else other than it. It leaves the lights on and the radio playing so we’ll think it’s still there. It stuffs pillows under its sheets in its own shape. It doesn’t even bother to leave a note.
As a consequence, we often don’t recognize that it’s gone until long past the prime time to chase it down and convince it to return. It’s miles away by the time we realize its absence. We’re forced to drive slowly through the streets of our soul shouting its name pathetically while the other priorities we’d been busying ourselves with look on curiously. It hasn’t been seen for days; we don’t even know where to begin.
Pay very careful attention to what I write next. Read these seven words seven times over. Burn them into your brain; write them in permanent ink upon your spirit.
We can’t afford for that to happen.
We can’t let our vision run away while we clean up, pay the bills, or engage in any one of a dozen other “important” chores around this house. We have to check in on our vision every few minutes. We have to have lunch with it, read it a bedtime story, listen intently while it offers its perspective of how the day went and what it believes tomorrow should hold. We have to put bars on the windows and reverse locks on the doors too high for our vision to reach. We have to check on it at 1:30 in the morning, tapping on its door and asking, “Are you OK in there?” and refusing to go back to bed until it answers. We have to make sure it knows how much we care, offer it the moon, pledge our undying fidelity, promise that we’re still willing to step in front of a train to keep it alive.
The Journey’s purpose is to gather, connect, and serve. In the midst of that, we have a passion to reach unchurched people with spiritual truth (not mindless religion). This is real church for real people. It’s our vision to be the church God had in mind. Launch, our membership class, is an opportunity for hundreds of people to find their place in God’s story here and embark upon the next chapter together with us. It’s our vision to gather for worship. Our weekend gatherings have as their goal people experiencing God and becoming or growing as followers of Jesus. It’s our vision to show people Jesus. We consider it a personal mission to invest in people’s lives throughout the week and then invite them to a weekend gathering. We live the invitation; because we believe the promise - 52 weekends a year, you can bring an unchurched friend, family member, neighbor, or coworker to The Journey and they’ll hear the message of Jesus in terms they can understand and relate to. Every weekend, we have the shallow end in mind.
It’s our vision to live the Bible. Our weekend messages help people apply the scriptures to every sphere of their lives and transition into deeper waters. It’s our vision to get to know each other. We “stick around” after weekend gatherings to make acquaintances; then our Life Groups are our primary way of connecting people for friendship and spiritual growth throughout the week. It’s our vision to use our gifts to serve. We volunteer on ministry teams; we give generously (a tithe and beyond); some of us progress to spiritual leadership. We equip people to serve God. It’s our vision to pray always. Everything we do is saturated with an awareness of and a passion for spiritual empowerment through prayer. We pray constantly and fervently. And we come together every First Friday for organic spiritual togetherness – worship, communion, and prayer.
This year, we’ll grow significantly. It’s the will of God. We’re poised to seize a better future together. Our specific plans may (will) change, but the vision isn’t going anywhere - we insist it stay in this house; never leave us… and we’ll never leave it. But it’s not enough that the vision stay at The Journey; it needs to stay specifically, personally with us as individuals. The body of Christ will go forward, arms locked with the vision; but will you be a part of the voyage? Will I?
Let’s check in on our vision - right now. Let’s make sure it’s feeling wanted. Let’s make sure it’s front and center in our lives. Now’s not the time to be distracted by the economy, sin, selfishness, apathy, or mediocrity. Now’s not the time to have dinner with frustration or distraction or insecurity while the vision hides out in the basement, wondering when (or if) it’ll be safe to come out again. Who are you living for? Yourself? Or God and the vision He has given you for His glory?
Today represents a chance to check in on our vision, to repent for sidelining it, to genuinely apologize for neglecting it, to beg it to not run away - and if we’ve been living it, to live it even more… we can never pursue the vision too passionately or embrace it too wholeheartedly.
Where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18).
Where there is a vision, the people thrive. That’s what’s happening at The Journey. That’s what’s happening for you and me. May the vision continue to be fulfilled.
