Very recently, I've been struggling internally with church vision and how we motivate people in church. As I've written before, our church has a deep history with a church-planting movement. When we left that movement, I reassessed a lot of my ideas about "church." As a result of that experience in 2001, I've been very hesitant about "casting vision" and motivating people through any means that might involve pride, manipulation, and the like.
Now, our church wants to focus on campus ministry, and I will play an important part in leading different groups in our church to work together in this new ministry. We want to get our youth group, university student group, international student group, and young professional groups to work together. To be honest, we like what City Church in Seattle is doing with their Generation Church.
I've been listening to some of Ps. Judah Smith's recent messages from Generation Church and am very impressed. I think it's a great idea to bring your Jr High, Sr High, and college-age students together, and give them straight-up messages about being disciples and fulfilling the Great Commission ... but then I realized I was hesitant about giving the same message to students in our church.
The problem is that I feel squeamish whenever we start talking about building something for God, be it our small group, ministry, or local church. The idea of a numeric goal (such as 10,000 students in five centers in the next five years) reminds me of the wrong-headed way I used to think about church. Yet, I believe that type of vision is necessary if we're going to get this student ministry off the ground in our own church.
We need a strong vision of where we're going with this in order to bring the various groups on board. Simply "we need to work together" isn't going to do it. We need to clearly give an inspiring vision of what we want to accomplish. And yet ... I can't help feeling that I've been here before and most, not all, of it came to naught. Any advice, experience, or encouragement to share?
2 comments:
the only bit of insight i can offer for now is that change is always resisted. most people like routine, and the way things have always been done. the moment you try to make it different, there is discomfort. but someone's gotta stretch the staff over the waters...
I realize this is a bit after the fact here, but I am just now re-grouping after final exams and Christmas!
I think we should be "straight up" with youth kids of all ages about who Jesus is, what it means to obey him and to be his disciple, to be a servant, and to follow the Great Commission. I think that means pointing out to them some pretty unpopular things. This would probably be the end of just entertaining them and taking them on long trips to Disney Land or somewhere. They should be taken on mission trips so they can see how the desperate live and how Christians can make a difference. You might not want to take them out of the country right now, with times as they are, but at least, they could do things like help out in Seattle outreach ministries to the homeless.
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