Vision 2012

With the new year and the impending culmination of the sale of our building, it is time to think seriously about the future ministry of Christ Presbyterian Church:
what might it look like?
where might it be?
what might it mean (for you and me and whoever else we might be serving)?

My hope is that by the time the next new year rolls around, we would have a pretty clear vision of what this ministry (or ministries) might look like, and even be on our way implementing the new vision.

Looking over my notes, I see that some fifteen years ago I wrote of four groups of people that
I saw with a particular need that a church like us could dedicate ourselves to fulfill.

In January of 1995, I wrote:

All around us, people are in need:

Children are growing up amidst societal forces we have never even dreamed of.
For the most part they know no place to get their bearings for a moral compass. Morality, ethics, and even good manners, have vague description.
They don’t even know there is a Golden Rule, much less what it may be.

Parents need so much help with the almost impossible task of raising children in today’s world.

Older Adults need safe, caring, stimulating places to be.
Loneliness is an incubator for a whole host of physical, mental, and emotional problems.

Single Young Adults need ways of exercising their souls as well as their bodies and minds. Care for their needs is paramount as self-esteem lessens as years of aloneness go by.

I firmly believe that our faith has a message for all of the folks around us.
People need what we have to give. People need to hear what we have to say.

Not only do people need what we have to offer, but we have a stake in offering.
We have an obligation to enable all people to be more fully who God intends for them to be.
It’s a Christ-like thing to do.

I am reminded that when Norman Vincent Peale first went to the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, he preached to 40 or 50 people each Sunday morning.
After about six months, he told his wife that people needed to hear what the faith has to say,
if they won’t come to hear it, he would have to get it to them in other ways.
And so he wrote, and published, and spoke in public forums at every opportunity.
Of course, a by-product of getting the word out to everyone is that more people will come.

Norman Vincent Peale realized that Marble Collegiate Church had to reinvent itself in order to continue to be in ministry. And they did. And the rest is history as countless millions of people all over the world have been influenced by their work.

This is our time of opportunity here at Christ Presbyterian Church.
We need everyone praying for this church and the vision that might revealed to us about what our ministry may look like in the years ahead.

Please commit yourself to take time to pray.
And as ideas come to you, jot them down and pass them to your pastor.

Lets all work together on Vision 2012.