Finding a Vision

Do you have a vision for your life? Do you have a plan, a purpose,or a sense of mission that directs your decisions and actions? If you are a Christian, you absolutely have a vision for your life whether or not you are aware of it. God has a vision for your life.

God has a vision for all of our lives, and that vision is for each of us to be transformed by God’s grace, redeemed, and empowered to share God’s love with the world. No matter if you are a stay at home mom, a steel worker, a pastor, a teacher, a teenager, or a politician, that is God’s vision for your life. The fun and often challenging part of this vision is figuring out how we are supposed to go about bringing it to fruition.

God has a vision for us as a church as well. As the church our purpose is to glorify God and make disciples. But we as a church must figure out how we are supposed to fulfill this mission, just as we are called to do as individuals. Once we find our vision, a specific calling that fits our unique gifting and context, then we can invest all of our energy and focus into being the church God is calling us to be.

Without that vision, however, it is very easy to get distracted from our mission and to get caught in the trap of simply making our church a fun and comfortable place for us to gather each week. God’s vision for us does not involve us being comfortable, relaxed, bored, distracted, or afraid.

And so for the next year we are going to embark on a vision finding journey. We are going to invest our resources and energy on discovering the unique ways that God intends to use us to impact this community. I hope that you are ready for this journey. It won’t be easy, it won’t always be comfortable, and it may surprise us. But, if we commit to it, the process will promise to transform, inspire, and give us a purpose. So let’s go. Let’s embark on the search for our vision together.

The keys to us discovering our God given mission as a church are having a clear picture of who God is and what God desires, understanding our history as a church, understanding our community context, and understanding ourselves. And so we are going to need your help in all of these areas. We need you to participate with us in this process. We invite your participation in a couple of ways. First, be with us in worship and participate in our exploration of the nature of God. This is the foundation to everything else that we do.

Second, join in the conversation. We gather each moth for a pot-luck lunch after worship. We will use these gatherings as times to discuss where we are going as a church and to elicit your input. Stop by our blog, you can get there by clicking the link at the top of the page. We are going to put the visioning process on display via our blog. We are going to lay our thoughts, struggles and triumphs out there for all to see and to participate with. Come to a small group. We are going to be challenging our small groups to enter into discussions about our issues as desires as a congregation as well. Come and be part of a community effort to discover our vision. 

We are entering wonderful, important, and critical days for Duneland Community Church and we need your help to make sure that we emerge from them as a new congregation. Are you ready to find God's vision for your life?

Blessings,

Pastor Greg