I’m a thinker. The jury is still out on how good or bad I am at it, but I am a thinker for sure. Sometimes I think of great new ideas and sometimes I think of things that will just improve what I’m already doing. Often enough, I’m thinking of new ways that as a church The Grove can live out the vision that we have.

This last Sunday, I shared with our church that I thought that we were missing some things. I believe that we always want to to think that we’re doing the things that we need to fulfill the vision we’ve been given, but when we stop and take hard a look we realize, we’re actually not or it isn’t that we’re not, it’s just that maybe our emphasis is misplaced. 

I wrapped up the year personally with this question, “Did I live in such a way in 2010 that put the focus on following after Christ?”

And then, did I lead my family, our team, The Grove, and everyone around me to the same outcome?

Then, as a whole, did our church and every person that’s part of it live the same thing out?

These are not only questions of vision, but they’re questions of leadership, action and focus as well.

I believe God has placed you (and I) in this place, at this time for a specific reason and I want to make sure I know what it is and focus on really fulfilling it. 

Sunday, I was able to share what I think is a HUGE next step for our church in fulfilling the vision, and I think it was a shock to some. 

OK, well not exactly a shock, I don’t think anyone close to our ministry or even close to what we’ve been doing in anyway has at all been shocked by the directions we take. This has been a wild ride as we’ve tried to simply follow Christ, we’ve blown it a few times, but God remains faithful to us. 

Fact is, in seeking to go where we need to go, I’ve had so many moments where I’ve been freaked out. I’m not kidding. Jesus scares me sometimes. The things he did and the things he asks of us are sometimes completely opposite of what my preferences might be. As we’ve talked about so many times, Jesus is really good at leading me and our church in to the tension of His vision for us and the world. 

Restoration. Reconciliation. They’re hard. But we’re going after those things. And we’ll do whatever it takes to get there and bring people back in to the story of God that He is writing and is so desperate for them to participate in.

I’ll write more about this later, including what this means for us and what I think it means as a whole.