Presby-Musings

This week is Vision Sunday at my church, and I am going to be preaching on our church's vision. Hence the monicker: "Vision Sunday." The vision of our church is to "Reflect and Reveal The Unselfish Love of Christ To the World."  We broke it down even further for our members and friends last year when we said: "When You Know Jesus , You Show Jesus." This vision has driven us to accomplish some incredible things over the past couple of years---ever mindful that whatever we do is by the grace of God and in the name of Jesus. The thing about vision is that if you don't revisit it over and over again---it leaks like a tired old balloon and the next thing you know it's barely hovering over the ground all deflated and sad. My kid just had a birthday party, so that image is fresh in my mind. So, this week we'll be revisiting our vision and providing our members and friends an opportunity to either commit to embracing and furthering i...

This week I am concluding a two-part sermon series on the vision of our church with a sermon entitled, "You Are The Vision." We spent a lot of time last week talking about what happens to a church when it loses it's vision, purpose or direction.  The bottom line?  It begins to die.  If nothing is done to regain the vision or find a new one, it's almost inevitable that such a church will  die. Since these two sermons are virtually one sermon in two parts, I am going to pick up where I left off last week... with Jesus. The vision that my church has embraced is grounded in Scripture and in experience.  We decided several years ago that we were being called by God to be the kind of church that didn't exist just to exist.  We asked ourselves a question: "If we ceased to exist tomorrow, who would miss us?"  That question led us to believe that our church was supposed to "Reflect and Reveal the Unselfish Love of Christ." In Philippians chapt...

There is this vacant lot I drive by every day on my way to work that until just a couple of weeks ago had this partially constructed house on it.  Whenever I looked at it, I wondered what happened that it was never finished. Here's a video on the site of the unfinished house and a short message to my congregation about the sermons I am preaching for the next two weeks: Funny thing.  I shot that video before leaving on a trip to the Holy Land for two weeks.  While I was gone, whoever owns the property decided to tear down the house. Ironic. Whatever plans that someone had for that house a long time ago when they started building it are fairly irrelevant now.  The vision was lost and now even the reminder of lost vision is gone. Maybe somebody with a better vision will come along and make something happen on that vacant lot. Here's why a vision is necessary:  When you don't have one, or you lose the one you had, things start falling apart.  And...