The vision thing: Church Away-Day 2006

On Sunday June 11th I talked about the challenge we face to bring the ethos of the church into line with the values, the vision and the goal of the church. The goal was defined simply in terms of bringing as many people as possible into the deepest possible relationship with God. In this context I’m using ethos to describe what we do and who we are. Both of these need to be in line with what we say we value and what we say we want to be.

To help us make this transition, (and I’m not suggesting that we’re not on the way, I’m just recognising that we’re on a journey of change together), we need to understand the context in which we are working these thing out and the focus of what we are trying to do.

Context and focus

We can think about the context and focus questions by asking ourselves: What does it mean to be Cotton End Baptist Church in 2006 and what might it mean to be Cotton End Baptist Church in 3 or 5 years time.

As I think about the future my dream, my vision is for a church that is actively meeting the needs of those within the church and those beyond the church. I dream of a church with a wide diversity of ministries balanced between spiritual and practical (although I’m not trying to suggest that something spiritual is not practical or the other way around).

I dream of a church that is growing in a sustainable way and a church that is always thinking creatively about how it can touch the wider community through kindness and in service, and open the door to a clear and compelling invitation to respond to God’s love shown through Jesus Christ.

I dream of a church that is willing to take Holy Spirit inspired risks in order to make a difference in the communities it serves. A church of radical believers who live wholeheartedly for Jesus Christ and will do whatever it takes to drive back the kingdom of darkness and usher in the reign of Christ.

Let’s get active!

Our mission statement is: To know God and to make God known. This is the focal point of our life together. Everything we do comes down to these two things: Knowing God and making God known.

To know God is all about my personal relationship with him. To make him known is all about how I share his love with others. If I were to put it simply then to make God known is all about loving people into a relationship with Jesus Christ.

But the challenge is turning this thinking into doing, or better still turning it into being. So the challenge is Let’s get active!

Active in discipleship

We’ll call this active following, because being a follower of Jesus is not a static thing but an active thing. You can get active in following Jesus by:

· Committing to a regular “quiet time”.
· Committing to regular corporate worship
· Committing to regular personal and corporate prayer
· Committing to a housegroup

I believe that housegroups are at the heart of the effective church. As we grow, housegroups will become more and more important. We have the opportunity to put in the best foundations for small groups by building and establishing groups right now. We have enough people around church to have at least 7 housegroups already. But only if we commit together to be a part of them.

Active in Evangelism

As you know I’ve been stressing Servant Evangelism for some time now. Let me just remind you of the principle and the context for SE.

Firstly the principle is simple: to do acts of kindness in Christ’s name with no strings attached. As such SE becomes a low risk, high grace strategy whereby we seek to touch lives through simple acts of kindness. Steve Sjogren calls this Active Kindness. But it’s important to realise that evangelism doesn’t end with SE. It’s one part of the picture. Alongside active kindness we need to get involved in Active Sharing of the gospel message.

Acts of kindness alone are unlikely to help anyone cross the line of faith, but they open the door of their hearts to the message. To paraphrase the Bible we need to be prepared at all times to give a reason for the hope we have.

Active Connecting

Active connecting is about how we go about building relationships with those not-yet-Christians. Again, one of our groups is going to look at this area, but here are a few thoughts to get us started.

Active Relationships

In keeping with the theme of getting active we can put active connecting into the context of active relationships. In other words, just as we are intentionally active in discipleship and mission, so too we are intentional in relationships. I’m going to suggest 6 key ideas about active relationships:

· Show genuine interest: Be interested without an agenda.
· Build true friendship: People should matter because they are people not projects.
· Not just an evangelistic opportunity: Too often we are in danger of befriending someone in order to share the gospel with them. I want to build friendships where the opportunity arises more naturally.
· Walk across the room: Initiating a friendship can be as simple as making a connection.
· Keep it simple: Don’t overanalyse or overcomplicate friendship. I suspect that people will see through any attempt to rush a friendship.
· Become intentional: Look for opportunities