Church Initiatives and Visions from God
Maybe, you have seen one of these signs in your community? I pass one everyday on my way to the church, but the funny thing is it has been posted by this intersection for over a year and I’ve never seen anyone working near it. They did try once for a couple of weeks, some workers showed up and took down the yield sign for those turning right in the intersection. The problem was taking the sign away made it difficult to understand the intersection and led to some confusion traffic situations. Eventually, the yield sign returned and nobody has worked on the intersection again.
This post is not a political post about Presidential or Congressional policies, but rather about church initiatives. So often we in churches or even our denomination unveils a new grand plan that will reach more people, cause church growth, or disciple more people for example. We roll out the big signs have a big campaign push and talk it up. Eventually, the fanfare fades, people have lost interest and it is off to the next idea. I have seen this done repeatedly, just count the previous evangelism campaigns in recent years.
Here are my thoughts. In churches, there should be the freedom to try new things, to take risks and find what works, however, most of the time these trials are presented as visions from God with a Scripture verse to back it up and when they don’t work out, no one wants to say that the leader was incorrect or more obviously, God didn’t make his vision happen. These projects are then just not talked about, left to die, or like the putting America to Work sign by my intersection, the sign remains but no progress happens. Why don’t we just call them risks or trial runs and see if something develops. If it doesn’t then try something else, but don’t be too quick to declare this as a vision from God unless you are totally sure. In any other business, the research and development group occasionally finds a new product or idea, but often does not. We in the church expect a 100% success rate when it is declared as a vision from God, so don’t label it that unless you’re sure.
I think we need to examine our follow-through, maybe some plans we need to stick with and see them through and others should be scrapped. Sometimes, we may be guilty of giving up on a project too quickly. My thought here is to examine if it is worth continuing with the project, much like Noah continuing to build the ark when it had never rained. He knew that this was a vision from God and if we know for sure that the vision is from God then we must continue to see it through.
Let’s take risks and try new things, but let’s not label them God’s visions unless we know for sure. God’s desires are clear in Scripture but the methods to achieve it often are not. For example, we know that he desires that none should perish but all should come to repentance and salvation is only found in Jesus Christ, but how do you get the gospel to the world, let’s try different methods to engage people. The message is the vision from God, but the method is not. Let’s not mix up message and method.
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