What kind of church - our ambition

Vision – where God is taking us.

Values are about who God is making us.  Vision is about where God is taking us.  One is identity – who we are.  The other is about ambition – where we’ll be.

We’ve talked about our values for the last month.  But what about vision?

Proverbs 29:18 says: 

‘Where there is no vision the people perish; but happy is he who keeps the law.’  (NKJV)

Vision here means ‘a God-given image of the future of a magnitude it terrifies us’.  Sometimes it is translated ‘prophetic vision’ (ESV) or ‘divine revelation of the future’ (AB). 

Perish means to ‘waste our energy in directionless franticness’ and is sometimes translated ‘cast off restraint’ (NIV) as in lose focus and waste resources.  It is the idea that without a clear sight of where God is calling us we risk wasting our potential and abandoning the legacy for God that we could leave.

It ends with ‘…happy is he who keeps the law.’ The word law is the usual word for the Bible.  It’s making clear the parameters for any vision are set by God’s Word.  It’s a timely, contemporary vision set from the timeless, eternal truths of the Bible.

Where will the Beacon be in 10 years?

How do we find our vision for the next ten years?  Is it already emerging – organically and organisationally? 

A Journey Together

As leaders we have begun to seek to see something of the future God has for us.  To sense where he may be taking us over the next 5-10 years.  Over the rest of this year we want to join together is seeking and seeing this future and so in various meetings and groups we will be inviting people to discern together God’s call upon us.

But we would like to share an image, a word and a question that we feel may be important.

An image of Beacons.  A number of different locations and sites and buildings and communities.  All the one church of Beacon, with the same values but living out that identity in the particular context and circumstances they find themselves in.  Maybe this is in starting new things (that is in our blood) or maybe by rejuvenating what has stagnated or struggled.

A word – pioneer.  That’s about innovation, development, initiative.  A Nehemiah-esq entrepreneurial spirit.

A question that has been raised by two external and independent sources - ‘Is God calling us to transition from being a local church to a regional movement?’ 

What next?

Will you participant in the discussion?  We need every willing voice if we are to see and hear clearly.  We’ll be telling you how over the next few months.

Will you partner in the practicalities with time, talents, and money?

Will you pray for the harvest, after all ‘the harvest is full but the workers are few.’ (Matthew 9:38)

Will you pursue Jesus personally, whatever that means for you?