Re-Vitalizing Vision

At this time of year we typically think about vision, whether it be personal, for our family, company or church. Vision is more comprehensive than goal setting, although it should contain goals. Vision might be described as an ideal picture of our future that informs the way we act within our present reality. I've been reflecting on how vital vision has been for me and our church the last few years, and how much God has done by His grace as we've responded to that vision. If it's true that without vision people perish, then the converse is true that with vision, people come alive. 

But how do we craft, cast and follow through with vision?

Here are 7 brief insights from the Apostle Paul as he describes his vision.

"Not that I have already attained these things or have been made perfect. But I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ laid hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, and straining to what lies ahead, I press on toward  the goal for prize of the upward call of of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will make that clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained." (Philippians 3:12-16)

1. Vision is upward before it's onward. 

Paul's ultimate vision is the prize of the upward call of God, that is, his resurrection and reward after the return of Christ. His ultimate goal is to please Jesus, not himself, which enables him to endure hardship, isolation and even the seeming frustration of his vision in prison. If our vision is ultimately an upward call we will remain faithful when the onward call is delayed. 

2. Vision is call before it's craft. 

While imagination is a factor in vision-crafting, Paul's vision was in response to Jesus' call. I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ laid hold of me. It wasn't his grand idea. It was God's. Discerning God's unique call can be tough, but laying hold of that begins by aligning our lives to Jesus' Great Commission.  That should frame every Christian's vision. 

3. Vision is discontented

Paul had attained so much in his life, but he refused to rest on his laurels. He pursued vision by forgetting his past accomplishments and by acknowledging what had not yet been attained. He had a holy discontentment with what he'd attained.  If we begin to glorify what we've already attained we will never press on. In the words of that old U2 song, "We glorify the past when the future dries up." 

4. Vision is defiant  

Paul is in prison. He's old and his eye sight is failing. While he acknowledges the confinement of his circumstances - he's writing a letter because he cannot get to them in person - his confinement doesn't dampen his enthusiasm or slow him down in any way.  Straining to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal. Paul's vision of seeing the gospel advance to new regions through the planting of new churches defied his circumstances. He had to change his approach by writing letters and raising up other leaders rather than visiting churches himself. But ponder for a moment what God did with those letters! I have settled that whatever God calls us to, it will always seem beyond what we can humanly resource ourselves. Faith defies current circumstance as it trusts the faithfulness of the One who calls.

5. Vision is progressive. 

This is a counter-point to the previous one. Paul's apparent forgetfulness is not complete amnesia. He's aware of what he and this church have attained. "Only let us live up to what we have already attained." In essence he's saying, "Don't rest on your past achievements. Build on them!" I've found that people's faith for a vision grows as it becomes more visible. People bless what they see God already blessing. There's a difference between a big vision and an unrealistic one. Start with something quantifiable and attainable and build on that. This past year we cast vision for the Jubilee Campaign, which was intended to get rid of our debt and  build a war chest for church planting. I think one of the reasons people blew us away with their generosity is that they saw we had a track record of investing significantly into church panting.  Ask God for a vision track-record to build upon. 

6. Vision is specific  

In the following chapter Paul thanks the church for their financial generosity to his vision. Their vision had concrete outcomes. I often see leaders cast such vague vision that they cannot be held accountable for whether they achieved it or not. While mission is less quantifiable, vision should be for a set period of time with quantifiable goals that you either hit or miss. 

Just under 3 years ago we cast a vision called 3 in 3 at Southlands Church. We had a vision to multiply 3 times in 3 years. The idea was for one multi-site in Southern California, one church amongst an un-reached people group, and one autonomous church plant in North America. The end point was April 2017.  By God's amazing grace, we have been able to plant a multi-site congregation in Whittier, and a church plant in Chiang Rai, Thailand, and we are now busy with our 3rd of 3 - the adoption and re-birth of a church in Chino that will become Southlands Chino in the Fall of 2017. The sticklers may say, "Well, you missed it. That's two multi-sites and you didn't do it by April 2017." To which I will respond, "You're right. We missed it. But because we aimed at something, we have never had this many people praying, training, giving and going. I'll gladly miss the next vision again like we missed this one." A quantifiable vision need not be a gun to our head. But it can be a much needed spur in our side.

7. Vision is prophetic. 

While rooted in our unchanging Biblical call, it does take imagination to craft vision. If you are a leader, gather some of your creatives to help you craft compelling vision.  But be open to the whispers of God through the prophetic! Look at the way the prophetic informed Paul's vision in Acts 16. God has spoken to us with astonishing specificity  as we've continued to follow His Spirit in the pursuit of His vision. Here are a few examples of this.

Southlands, when I woke up on New Year's Day the Spirit prompted me to go to the above passage. As I sat with it, I sensed Him whisper just two words. "Kick on." Kick on is a coaching term used for an athlete who is in the final stretch of a race and is running well. It's the encouragement to pick up the pace and turn advantage into victory. God has been so kind to us. But He is calling us all to "kick on" in 2017 in the final stretch of this 3 in 3 vision. Let's not rest on our laurels. The always previous God has gone before us. We've prayed, given, trained and gone. But the race is not yet won.

When Church Planting feels like Church Pruning.

So, the send-off of our team to plant One Light Church in Chiang Rai, Thailand, has come and gone. What a momentous night it was, soaked with tears, buoyed with faith-filled worship and weighted with sober gratitude for this intrepid team of men, women and children who are laying down their lives to make disciples of Jesus in a nation largely unreached by His gospel.

In the words of John Piper, "Mission is secondary. Worship is primary. We do missions because Jesus is not yet worshipped by a people in a place. We do missions in order that the white-hot worship of the Son of God may go up from every nation, tribe and tongue." This is the reason we plant churches. We believe the local church is God's primary mode for making disciples; people who will worship Jesus with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength. 

Although the team have not all left yet, the sense of loss here is palpable. Dear friends who have become family are not going to be around in the same way, and while social media, skype and air travel make the world a much smaller place, we cannot know these friends in same way we did. The book of Acts, full of bitter-sweet gospel good-byes, gives us permission to rejoice and grieve at the same time at these moments. Perhaps those are the two most appropriate emotions right now; simultaneous gratitude and grief. Gratitude, because we know they are going to be planted to bear much fruit, and grief, because we feel like we have been pruned. That's the thing, isn't it? Planting a church feels like planting for those going, and pruning for those staying. Both planters and senders pay a price, but it's a very different kind of price. 

So what does it look like to care for those going as well as those staying at this time? To shift the metaphor, what does it mean to take care of both the child and the mother who has given birth? Both need to be healthy in order to survive and thrive. Our concern is for all all three of our communities who have each sent excellent people to Thailand. We can never replace the people who have gone, but we are trusting God to replenish us. As elders, we've particularly been asking God for wisdom for Southlands Brea, a community that has sent out around 150 missionaries and leaders  in the last 3 years. What mother that's given birth 3 times in 3 years would not feel a need for replenishment after that? 

Make no mistake though, the joy of new life has made it all worthwhile. We have absolutely no regrets. John's Gospel describes it like this; "A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world." (John 16:21) We have witnessed such stunning new life as we have sent people to Fullerton and Whittier, and now anticipate the same in Thailand. Even as we speak, there are opportunities opening for us in the Inland Empire too. God, by his extra-ordinary grace, is making us into a fruitful family together, and this fills us with joy. But we want to look at what it means to be this kind of fruitful family in a wise and sustainable way. Jesus' assurance to us in John 15 is that the Father prunes, not because we are unfruitful, but because we are fruitful, and because He wants us to produce more fruit!  

So, in the month of August, we will do community specific sermon series. Southlands Whittier will do a series on the Holy Spirit, Southlands Fullerton will do one on the Psalms, and Southlands Brea will do one on 'The Fruitful Church.' It will be a reminder about why we are called to be fruitful, how we recover from fruitfulness, and how we sustain fruitfulness. If you consider yourself part of the Southlands Brea family, please join us this Sunday as we begin the new series. 

Jubilee Campaign Giving Day

Southlands is a family with a mission to glorify our Father in the power of His Spirit by proclaiming the gospel and making disciples of Jesus. 

Every church in every generation is called to align itself with the Great Commission, but each church family fleshes out the mission in unique ways. We have been called to focus our efforts on planting healthy, gospel-centered, Spirit-empowered communities living on mission together. This is not the only way to make disciples, but we believe it is a vital way. Over the years, many people have gone, given, prayed, served, and led, making this church planting mission a reality. Countless lives have been transformed as people have gone to set up churches as colonies of heaven in towns and cities. Over the last 18 years Southlands has multiplied 14 times, with our next church plant taking place in Chiang Rai, Thailand in the Fall of 2016. As leaders, our desire has been to find a wise and sustainable way of multiplying as God leads us.  

With this in mind, we embarked on a 3 in 3 vision in 2014, aiming to multiply 3 times in 3 years. Southlands Whittier was the 1st of 3, and the Chiang Rai, Thailand plant will be the 2nd of 3 multiplying initiatives. As you can imagine, these two plants require very different kinds of training and resources. 3 in 3 is not about expansionism. We believe it is a way of remaining faithful to the Great Commission to go and make disciples of all nations. Obviously, all of this costs money, and God has provided for us in remarkable ways as we've sought to obey Him. As a church, we set aside money every month to go specifically towards church multiplication which has enabled us to save towards resourcing the Chiang Rai plant. However, we believe that God is calling us to develop something of a multiplication war chest that enables us to do more than just budget for the next initiative. 

We do have an obstacle standing in the way of our desire to build this church planting war chest though. Thankfully we owe nothing on our property. However, we do pay around $10,000 a month towards a lawyers debt that was incurred in 2010 when we had to take legal measures to defend our church by-laws. By God's kindness we've been able to pay the lawyer's debt down from $830,000 in 2010 to $130,000 today. While the debt repayment represents good financial stewardship, it is increasingly difficult to do that, raise funds for church planting as well as run our local mission effectively. 

We have another incentive for paying off our debt rapidly. Next year Southlands Church will be 50 years old! She is a testament to the faithful promise of Jesus to build His church.  With our 50th birthday in mind, I began to look at the Biblical idea of the Jubilee. The Jubilee took place in Israel every 49 years. (Leviticus 25:8-10) Christopher Wright, in his book The Mission of God, explains that every 50th year, slaves would be released, debt would be cancelled, and people who had given up property because of poverty would be returned to their land. When Jesus  began his ministry with Isaiah's description of the Jubilee, he said that it was fulfilled in Him. Jesus himself, is our Jubilee, having paid our debt and released us from the prison of sin. Jesus interpreted the Jubilee not so much as reclaiming land as much as reclaiming mission. He spoke of a year of favor in which the Spirit of the Lord would anoint the people of God to preach good news to the poor and bind up the broken hearted and set prisoners free. The Church continues Jesus' mission in the power of His Spirit. (Isaiah 61, Luke 4)  

At the beginning of this year as we prayed about our 50th year, the elders sensed God speak to us about our Jubilee year being a year of cancelling our financial debt. This was not just to be for the sake of building improvements or staff hires, but primarily for the sake of reclaiming mission. We believe that God is leading us into a year of removing debt and reclaiming mission. 

Over the past month we have cast the vision of the Jubilee Campaign to various forums in the church,  asking people to prayerfully consider giving towards it, over above their normal tithes and offerings. We spoke of a giving day on Sunday the 1st of May, when we would all either pledge or give towards the Jubilee Campaign. Our aim is to raise $250,000 over the next year, enabling us to remove our debt and raise enough money for the 3rd plant in our 3 in 3 vision. 

My family has personally committed to give 2% of our annual income, over and above our normal tithes and offering, towards the Jubilee Campaign in the coming year. I know of a number of people who have committed similar percentages, and more. What we are asking is for each person to commit to an amount or percentage according to their means. We are looking to share the giving load. Let's trust God for an outpouring of generosity this Sunday as we seek to remove debt and reclaim mission to the Glory of God. 

To view a short video explaining the campaign click on Jubilee Campaign vimeo