What Frames Our Vision?

Thanks to everyone who made it to the membership meeting last night. It was a full meeting that featured so many different pieces of congregational life. Walking away from the time together, I am especially grateful for our church. God has been so good to us, he is good to us, and he will continue to be good to us. “Mainly thankful” once again takes the day. 

Toward the end of the meeting I was able to spend a little time talking about the vision of our church. Last summer the pastoral team spent several weeks evaluating our church’s vision, and the first exercise in the process was gaining increased clarity about the church God has given us: What are the unique needs and challenges where God has placed us? What are the unique resources and capabilities that God brings together in us? What particular focus most energizes and animates our leadership?

The three questions form our local predicament, collective potential, and leadership passion. In short, when it comes to clarity, we are a church devoted to the Word of God, and we want to see lives shaped by it. It’s the recipe of “Bible in relationship” — which is what discipleship is. We think we do that here at Cities Church, and we want to do it better and better.

Next, from this place of clarity, we step into where we want to go. Where are we headed? 

Will Mancini calls this the “vision frame,” and it’s basically just that. It takes our mission and lets it frame our vision, like so:

Looking ahead to five years from now, this is what we envision: 

We are a healthy, vibrant church with a high priority and capacity to multiply more churches like ours in the Twin Cities. 

Our health and vibrancy is seen in the ways our church follows Jesus and understands his realness in the three spheres of the church, the home, and the world, including, in particular, strong marriages, faithful children, purposeful work, and hospitable neighboring. Our people will deeply understand, increasingly practice, and winsomely communicate the good news of Jesus’s death and resurrection. And we are led by pastors who are as Christlike as forgiven sinners can be.

In short, I want us to have more of Jesus, and I want our cities to have more of Jesus through us.

This is not a pipe-dream, but it’s a realistic, sustainable vision — and one thing it means is that as we multiply more church plants throughout the metro, Cities Church proper takes on a “hub feel” to the wider movement. We become a true mother church, or, switching to an astronautical metaphor, we become a launching pad. In terms of where we are geographically, we think our current location is especially strategic because it’s literally right in the middle of the Twin Cities — and the idea is that as a hub, we’d plant churches like spokes north, south, east, and west.

And place matters for vision. 

This place matters for that vision.  

Therefore, we are seriously considering the possibility of purchasing our building. We don’t have any updates beyond that right now, but we wanted to get this on your radar to ask that you pray for God’s guidance. We need him to part the sea. As a baptist church, we value and practice congregationalism. That means we want to hear from you, and we can’t — we wouldn’t — make any big decisions without you. So please pray, and we’ll get you updates as the process continues.

Mainly thankful,
Pastor Jonathan