Thanksgiving is upon us again and most of us are looking forward to the big meal with all the trimmings. Have you ever looked at a particular food and just couldn’t wait to taste it, until you did? It did not taste at all like you expected. Maybe it was because of different spices or maybe it was because someone used the wrong ingredients! There are many different ways to make dressing (cornbread, bread, etc.) and many different receipts with a multitude of various ingredients. One is not necessarily right or wrong but they certainly do taste different.
When our family first moved into Romania our youngest child was having a birthday and Shelby was getting everything ready. Of course that meant a cake had to be baked to help celebrate properly. The challenges were many because the stove was unique and the ingredients we bought there were a little different. Regardless, the cake fell and had a giant sinkhole right in the middle. It did not take her long to figure out she could dig out the gooey part and make a wonderful bunker to portray a major battlefield with soldiers. He thought it was his best cake ever!
A church should desire to have the right ingredients as described in Acts 2:42-47 of worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, and outreach that is directed by the word of God. Our method of ministry should be God’s method. We need to e careful to not read certain cultural traditions of any particular century or favorite recent decade into our biblical methodology. One example is the conversation of hymnbooks being the correct “method” of worship and praise. If that were true then how was proper worship accomplished before the printing press?
We add into our list of right ingredients our personal preferences, the way we have done things in the past, or what we believe should be the “right” ingredients. We do not have strong scriptural evidence but rather just a particular taste for the way we have always made our dressing. You see the thanksgiving dressing I was raised on will always be the best tasting dressing to me. We can argue over cornbread, bread, or a mixture of the two or we can celebrate that there are different kinds of dressing that bring delight to people with different tastes.
Now, I know this will not set well with everyone and some will see this as a desire to compromise the word of God but trust me nothing could be further from the truth. When the word of God declares truth it must not be altered in any way. However, it seems that while we argue over issues that really do not matter the bigger issues of the church go unnoticed. While many churches wonder why they do not have this ministry or that program the real question is, are you obeying the Great Commission? Only 2% of Christians ever invite someone to church.
Are you passionately pursuing the lost and those who are far from God? Dr Kenneth Priddy describes the right ingredients of a vision for your church as, “God’s vision…through our church…in our community…at this time.” These four vision dynamics give you a track to determine the direction God desires your church to follow and carry out His mission. You do not decide what your mission is because He has already stated it and why you exist in His word. With your mission already decided and declared you should be focused on what kind of disciple you are.
Mission is why you exist and God has determined that His church exists to carry out the Great Commission and to make know His manifold wisdom (Ephesians 3:10). Vision determines where you are headed and has been described as your preferred future. Someone has referred to it as the ability to paint the dreams that God has placed on your heart for all to see. It means that you are a visionary. It is walking across a field with a church planter as he describes what God has placed on his heart to do on that particular piece of property but all you can think about is that at any time a snake is going to bite you. The visionary can see it!
Mission is why you exist and vision is where you are headed as you carry out God’s mandate. Strategy is the unique ways and steps you are prayerfully planning in how to carry out the vision God has given you. This is where you might use sage in your dressing or you might not. You might cook your dressing inside the cavity of the turkey or you may think that is really gross. Things like worship style, greeters, programs, and systems are strategies not vision. They are strategies for carrying out His vision by choosing what not to do as much as choosing what you should do.
While we argue over strategy, if we are not very careful, less people are involved in doing what He has called us to do. You are called to be His ambassadors by begging others on his behalf to be reconciled to Him. While you are arguing over how to do church you may not be obeying His crystal clear commands. You are His method—ology. As ambassadors every believer is called to be a messenger of and a representative for the King of Kings. Are you pleading and begging those who are from God to be reconciled to Him or are we just arguing over ingredients?