about vision

Coffee percolating. Morning light pushing through the dark. I celebrate the quiet of the morning. I enjoy prayers when it is still and beautiful as the sun rises turning the sky purple, pink, and then blue. Morning shadows are unique as they creep across the desert and stir the animals from a starry night’s rest. I enjoy breakfast meetings. God works on me at breakfast meetings. Perhaps it is the good company. The ambiance of the restaurant and the smell of coffee, bacon, toast, and hash browns, set a place of hospitality inviting good conversation. This particular teaching moment happened at two different breakfast meetings at two different restaurants, IHOP and Marie Calendars. As I sat with these two leaders at different times of the week, men who I consider to have a passion for Christ’s church, both asked me in their own way, “What is your vision (passion) for this church, you’re the guy that is shepherding (spiritual guide for) this congregation, so where do you see this church going?” This is a question many pastors are accustomed to, and on these mornings, these men queried with a concerned intensity speaking to their love for the congregation.

“With Christ as the head of our church,” I responded, “the pastor and the session pray and discern what they reason and hope to be God’s vision for SPC. My particular vision of where I see God’s hand directing us, is simply inspired by the New Testament understanding that the church is a ‘sent people’ into the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Explaining that every aspect of our lives can inspired by this metaphor, I asked, “What will it take for you to see yourself being sent to work every day, or sent to school, or sent on a vacation, or sent to the grocery store, or sent to Starbucks, or sent anywhere everyday by God with the gospel of Jesus Christ?” They nodded their heads in understanding. So I continued, “When a pastor and the congregation understand the church as being sent by God, with each of us in particular sent by God, the pastor must do everything he or she can to encourage, enable, empower, and equip missionaries with the spiritual tools, biblical truths, and cultural awareness for the mission field.”

Pastors and officers have several choices to guide and lead the congregation in this particular spiritual understanding of being the church. Some say discipleship is our best response, some say evangelism is our best response, and some argue that worship is our best response; some have said just get to the property. A good “reformed and always reforming” leadership puts God first and understands all three are absolutely critical in the life of any church, and it is why the original steering committee and I struggled with who God is calling SPC to be, and how we would be sent to Las Vegas and the world. So, worship, discipleship, and evangelism were built in as our core values as part of our mission to accomplish our vision.

My particular desire and vision is to see every member of SPC as a missionary sent into every aspect of your life with God’s love. The heart of what I preach and teach for this particular NCD is to encourage God’s hospitality as a joyful response to being missional. Hospitality, for SPC, is God’s place of growth (spiritually and numerically) for us, and a liberating power of reconciliation in Las Vegas. Our “assurance of things hoped for, and conviction of things not seen” as an NCD whose priorities are (based on the session’s prayer and discernment): church membership growth, to help create God’s growing vibrant campus, to offer meaningful worship experiences, to celebrate fellowship, engage youth in ministry, to offer community outreach events, sharing in holistic discipleship, and to get the word out that SPC is a welcoming home, is to practice being a welcoming people of God for the world … and to be encouraged that it is God who has invited SPC into the Las Vegas Valley with the good news of God’s love. My humble voice in leadership as a missional pastor of SPC is to celebrate, guide, and help the session and the congregation toward this magnificent vision through preaching the Word, teaching the faith, and loving the people.

I have been blessed with an illuminating passage as a light for my path as your pastor, and I pray your journeys in ministry and life will discover this miracle of morning light, “Delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4

Just a thought,

Pastor Tom