We’re excited about this series… on the heels of launching Next Steps and working towards Vision Sunday on the 24th… we wanted to take these next few four Wednesday nights and give us all a fresh look at the vision, culture, values and what it looks like to be a committed part of what God is doing in our church.

Tonight we’re going to talk through our vision and the three things encompass all of ministry for us, but before that we’re going to take a look at how we got here. TBH it’s easy to stand up here and brag and tell stories but we thought that the most compelling way to hear the story is through you… the people that have made this what it is from the beginning.

Check this out VIDEO

We’re going to talk through vision tonight—and for many of you this will be a refresher. But for some of you, this might be the first time hearing it. Vision Sunday is coming up soon, where we’ll hear what is coming this year for us. But tonight, we want to revisit the big picture—the framework that everything else we do fits in.

So let’s jump in.

There’s a lot of talk—especially online—about what church is for and who church is for. That’s led to a lot of well-meaning people attempting to reimagine or reinvent church altogether.

But while we may have our own language and expressions of ministry life… what church is—and what it’s for—hasn’t changed.

Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology says it like this:

The Church exists to…

• Worship God
• Equip the saints for the work of ministry
• Reach the world

→ In that order.

But what we’ve seen over the last several years is that order get inverted. The church primarily exists to reach people… so we sanitize our services, our programs, our language, so no one gets offended…

And then everyone shows up to church and wonders why God didn’t.

You built a church primarily around inviting the lost instead of inviting God.

If the goal is attracting people, then worship and equipping get shaped around that goal… instead of shaping everything around attracting the presence.