Vision

by Jim HollandIn February and March, our church will be RE-Visioning. I wrote about this last month, but feel like more explanation is needed. Why spend a couple of months going over the vision and values of St. Patrick? One illustration will suffice. In a session meeting a few months ago, our leaders took a quiz to determine how clear we were about our vision and mission. It was made up of ten questions, for example:“In the last 30 days, did you hear church members talk about your church’s vision?”“Is your church’s identity unquestionably contagious?”“Does your church mission roll off your tongue with clarity and heartfelt conviction?”As our session answered these questions, we all realized that we had a vision problem. We determined that our vision is the right one, but that we have been in what is known as “mission drift,” at least to a large extent. This means that you have a vision, but it is not really informing what you do and how you do it. So we did what you have to do when such questions are on the line: for the past several months our Session has had meetings on top of meetings, as well as heated and spirited discussions among guys who are fighting for St. Patrick Church and what God wants us to be.The first thing we did was go back to our founding documents, which outline our original vision, values and purpose to see if we all agreed with them. These included the original statements and values we outlined when the church was first planted, and the purpose statement you see on the bulletin every week, which we wrote in 2004. If you haven’t been here long, a little history is in order. Our church grew rapidly for the first ten years, but has reached a plateau over the past few years. Why? Because the economy collapsed and we didn’t build a building, or because we have had challenges in ministering to a much more diverse crowd? Well, those certainly are factors. However, because these things have happened, the past three years have also found our leadership asking hard questions about purpose and vision, questions about who we really want to be. It has been sort of a Wilderness experience—painful, hard, soul searching and yes, very profitable.As we asked these hard questions, we realized that our purpose and vision hasn’t changed: we are a gospel-centered church, seeking to involve people in deep relationships and seeking to see the gospel bring restoration to the lives of friends, neighbors and communities. But the problem is, how do we articulate that? Our purpose statement is very long and it doesn’t exactly “roll off your tongue with clarity and heartfelt conviction.” It is not exactly a rallying cry. It is great at articulating our purpose to an already-interested person. But for articulating who we are day-in, day-out, something what missing. What? The ability to communicate our vision succinctly and provocatively. We needed something that was short, something everyone can embrace, something that is easily communicated not only with church members, but with people outside the church as well. As we read literature, we realized it wouldbe really helpful to have a statement of some kind—a tag line, so to speak—that would encapsulate what we are about. It would be large enough to convey who we are, but short enough to be easily learned and easily repeated. For our needs, we have a great purpose statement to which we can point people (the one on the front of the bulletin every week). But it’s that short statement that is the piece we’ve been after—the bones are there; we’ve simply needed a way to articulate it. For instance in the first century, the vision of the early Christians was something very simple, yet profound, and it shaped everything they did and were: “Jesus is Lord.”So after months and months of discussion, our Session took a step forward overw44helmingly approved a new Vision Statement, and here it is:Loving God. Loving People. Loving Life.As Brian Henson wrote: “This statement gets at the heart of our purpose statement, and it reflects the three big commands in Scripture: the Great Commandment (Deut. 6); the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19); and the Creation Mandate (Genesis 1:26). It’s all right there. It’s all about the worship, community, discipleship, and celebrating in the goodness of God. It’s enough to intrigue people, but not so much that it will answer all their questions…it begs to be explained further, and that’s the whole point: to have a life-on-life experience with what we’re talking about.”Beginning February 3 (fourteen years since St. Patrick was organized as a church), we will be talking about our Vision and the Six Core Values that we embrace as a body of believers. In addition, we will be talking about our vision and values in Community Groups and adult Sunday School. We will also unveil our new and redesigned website, which will have sermons online in both audio and manuscript formats, so that information is accessible not only to our church, but to the people we are trying to reach with the gospel as well.Why do all this? Simple: we really feel called to make more and better disciples of Jesus. Do we want to grow? Absolutely—numerically and spiritually, we really want to equip our people (better disciples) and reach the non-believer (more disciples).Building a permanent facility on our land in the heart of Collierville is part of this vision as well. In fact, we might say that our vision drives this desire. We really need to sink “deep roots” in Collierville to continue to see the gospel grow and thrive in this place. We need an investment, a sense of permanence, and a place that will both define and expand our history and story and embody the gospel in a place. It is going to be an exciting journey, and we can’t wait to share it will you!!