Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Fresh Vision, Part 3 (Our Purpose)

What kind of church do I want to attend? What kind of church do I want to lead?

Short answer: One that is Jesus Christ-centered & Biblically-focused! What is your answer?

How would I know that a church is being Christ-centered and Bible-focused?

Short answer: It is living out what Christ and the Bible teach and model. What is your answer?

What do Christ and the Bible teach and model?

Short answer: Love God, Love People, Make Disciples. What is your answer?

What happened when people in the Bible and under Christ’s leading loved God, loved people and made disciples?

Short Answer: People were changed, the church grew and God was glorified (which is his number one goal by the way)!

I have been called to full time Christian Service. I love and believe in the local church…so much that I have committed my life to it. Right now, I happen to be at Capital Christian Fellowship in Lanham, MD. If I was in China, I would feel the same passion that the call of Christ for His church must be lived out.

My heart’s PURPOSE for CCF is that we:

Love God & Love People! That is our purpose!

A few questions immediately come to mind:

What does it look like to love God?

What does it look like to love people?

How do we do it? How do we accomplish our purpose?

Where does it happen?

Short answer: The way that Christ and the Bible teach us to and the way that the early church accomplished it (effectively I might add). We accomplish our purpose through Large Group Gatherings and Small Group Gatherings!

That said, we need to unpack what LARGE GROUP GATHERING means and what SMALL GROUP GATHEING means. In order for us to buy the vision, we need to know what they each accomplish, how they align with scripture, how we do them most effectively, how they impact how we “do church”, how we measure their success, and on, and on, and on…

We will get there. Soon I will be posting more about vision. Specifically about Large Groups and Small Groups and how they promote our PURPOSE as a church.

Feel free to post comments or email ideas. I would find tremendous value in hearing from you. If you are a part of the CCF community, you will be urged/invited to engage this dialogue as a church community very soon! Again, I am writing my messages for the first of the year here. Thanks for reading in for the sneak peak.

-Love!

No comments: