Vision Shaping Part II

Vision Shaping Part II

Starting new churches is not rocket science - it's much more complicated than that.

In the last post, I shared that living into God’s vision and then contextualizing that vision in our own community just might help keep us from becoming a sad statistic.  The fact is that church’s fail at an alarming rate.  I remember the first line of “Starting New Church’s” that I read in preparation for the formation of Lightshine like it was yesterday.  The very first sentences of the introduction scared me to death.  It reads,

“Starting a new church is not rocket science - it’s much more complicated than that.  A new church is the work of the Holy Spirit, which immediately puts this task way beyond our ability to understand”.  

It must be complicated because so many start ups never make it to see their first birthday or even fewer, their second.  We celebrated our second birthday back in October, 2015 with a sense of real joy and admittedly a little relief.  It certainly is even more complicated and beyond my understanding than I ever imagined.  

Vision may not be the only important thing that keeps us afloat, but without it, we know that we are sunk.  Ultimately the vision is God’s but we have some say in what this vision looks like in our context.  Some great visions have come from strong leaders (Martin Luther King’s, “I Have A Dream” speech comes to mind).  But what about the contextual vision of Lightshine?  Where does it come from?

Many of you have heard me say this before but Lightshine Church really wasn’t even my idea.  As much as I might like to take the credit (and Lord knows I could use some), it would be dishonest.  A new church is first the work of the Holy Spirit and I believe this whole heartedly.  Our job is then to take God’s vision and put flesh on it in the Conejo Valley today.  

A Good Listener

One of the things that continues to surprise and impress me is the manner in which Lightshine members and friends have helped to create this vision.  It’s been a collective work of listening to the Holy Spirit, listening to the real needs of our community, and discerning together what a vision for Lightshine might look like.  Many of the most important mission endeavors that we have been a part of in our community did not come from me.

For example; the idea for our partnership with a public school (Walnut Elementary) came from leaders in our local school district while working with one of the founding planting team members, Eric Lindroth.  In fact, most of our missional bridge building efforts to connect with our community have come from our members and friends, not from me.  

Lightshine has been an experiment in what I like to call “shared vision”.  This is part of the excitement of small, missional churches.  We are fairly nimble.  We can move rather quickly (for a church).  We can experiment, even fail sometimes and learn.  The bottom line is that although ultimately it is God’s vision, all of us at Lightshine can contribute to vision shaping.  With prayer, hopefulness, and hustle, this shared vision that we create together is our response to God’s BIG vision, which just might help enable us to see year 4 and beyond; God willing.     

Robert Douglas - Organizing Pastor - Lightshine Church

   

Vision Shaping Part I

Vision Shaping Part I

Success and Desire

Leadership expert John Maxwell says, “Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities.  They vary greatly in their desires to reach their potential.”  In order to reach your potential as an individual or organization you have to have a clear vision of exactly what you want, know why you want it, and also determine when you want it to happen.

What's The Deal About Vision?

But just how important is vision for a start up missional church?  Who shapes the vision for a local church?  

In an often quoted passage from the Bible, Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision the people perish but happy are those who keep the law.”  Normally we only quote the first half of the verse not quite sure what to do with the second.  Evidently vision is important if we don’t want to perish.  

As a start up church, Lightshine is in the infancy phase of the lifecycle of a church, but we also know that we want to be around for the foreseeable future.  I find it fascinating that vision is closely linked with keeping God’s commands.  Maybe God has given us a vision for the world, for the church.  Maybe that vision is contained in Scripture and that our obedience to God’s commands has something to do with it.  

The idea of God’s kingdom, which has come in part in Jesus‘ arrival and will someday be completed upon His return provides plenty of vision.  I like to ask good questions more than I like answering them.  What are the characteristics of this kingdom or reign of God?  What does this kingdom look like?  What will it one day look like when it is complete?  

We get clues all over the Bible, but we don’t get a step by step instruction guide to building the kingdom of God.  Only God can truly build His kingdom, but God does seem to ask for our help in extending it, or offering it to others; pulling back the curtain a bit so that others can see it breaking into our world.

God’s Word may not read like an instruction manual with step by step instructions, but it definitely does not lack in vision.  Quite the contrary it contains the greatest vision ever cast; a loving God who loved so deeply that He gave everything in Jesus who came to offer salvation in living, dying, and rising so that we might have abundant life both now and forever.  God wants the world to know the vision cast in Scripture.

First and foremost it is God’s vision.  But how might this vision take on flesh in a 21st century, small, suburban missional church plant like Lightshine?  In answering questions like this, we help create a vision for Lightshine that tries to be faithful and obedient to what God has commanded.  Happy are those who keep the law.

How do we take God’s amazing vision for the world, the Church, and our community and make it our own?  If we do this well, we just might reach our potential and survive past the infancy stage in the lifecycle of a church.  If John Maxwell is right, then we have the abilities that can make us successful.  The question is, do we have the desire?  I believe that we do.  More on this next time.

Robert Douglas - Organizing Pastor - Lightshine Church