VISION

I'm about to head over to the sanctuary for my final practice for Sunday's sermon. People often ask me how I can preach without notes. Well, practice, practice practice (and of course, sometimes I do leave stuff out...the trick it to keep going!).

I'm really excited about this sermon (I love to preach, so I get a bit dorky about it and such). I'll be walking us through the new vision statement--Calvary seeks and invites all to become disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of our community and our world. I'll be explaining what we're already thinking of (a lot of which you can read on my blog) but also pointing out what we have yet to do. For example, we need to set some goals and in a more specific way, the exact vision we have now. Our overarching vision may be transforming our community and our world, but what would that look like?

I came (back) across a quote from Andy Stanley, a church leadership writer, "Everybody ends up somewhere in life. A few people end up somewhere on purpose. These are the ones with vision." (Visioneering, p. 8)

I think that's the crux of this issue for us. Calvary will end up somewhere. 5 years. 10 years. 50 years. Something will have happened. But we want to get there on purpose. We can't control life, that's true. But we can certainly influence our lives and Calvary's future in powerful ways.

Let me propose a few ideas I have, to get the conversation going...and invite you to share your ideas with us! I'm using as a guide for this the principles of SMART goals, which our conference uses when setting personal and corporate goals:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely

I believe Calvary can and should:
-Average over 500 in worship attendance within the next five years.
-Have at least three projects that we are active and deeply engaged in that transform our community.
-Have at least two projects that we are actively and deeply engaged in that transform our world.
-Involve 60% of our worshipers in some sort of small group.

Those are some ideas. And some, honestly, we're not very far from. But to really accomplish we would need to figure out how to get there (and, honestly, the middle two are probably not the easiest to measure). But it's a start, and there are no doubt more, as well as ways these can be drawn out even future into the future. What do you think?