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