Over the past two weeks we have spent time in worship talking about the mission and vision of our church. As you may have heard me say, our vision is to make disciples of Jesus Christ who love God, love others and do good. As we seek to fulfill that mission of making disciples we have developed five North Stars. These North Stars are the areas that we intend to focus on in the years ahead. They include things like being agents of change in our world, expressing excellence in hospitality and discipleship, raising up people in service and leadership and being generous as a church.
Within those five North Stars we have developed five big, audacious goals for 2023. If you haven't heard about that I would encourage you to watch the video of Sunday's message at this link. I believe that God is leading us into some great work in the coming year. Among our goals include greatly expanding our discipleship opportunities, providing ways for every member to be involved in mission and outreach beyond our four walls, developing an intentional pathway to help people become engaged in volunteering and leadership and much more. I am super excited about the goals we have set. They are big goals, but I believe in the power of God we can see them come to fruition. And when we do, I believe the impact will be amazing.
I'm a planner. I love setting goals. I love developing the plans around fulfilling those goals, but as we dream about our mission and vision for the future, I want to remind us of this important thing. We must always leave room for God. At the ministry celebration dinner on Saturday I reminded us that any victories we see as a church, any goals that are fulfilled, any lives that are changed will ultimately be the result of the movement of God's Holy Spirit.
And so I want to encourage us to be engaged in the goals to the very best of our ability. There are things here for all of us. But I also want to remind us that we must leave room for God to move. It will never be in our own strength or ability that we achieve great things. It will be the result of the movement of God's spirit, in power, that make it all possible. In fact, I believe that if we will leave room for God, he will bring us to greater heights than we ever imagined. We will see greater fruitfulness in our ministry than we ever dreamed of.
So I would ask you to do three things out of all of this. First, if you didn't hear about the five goals for this year, please go and watch the message and make note of those goals. Secondly, think about how you might become engaged in each of these areas. And thirdly, please begin immediately praying for God's Holy Spirit to move in our midst. The prophet Zachariah wrote centuries ago “not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit says the lord.” I am praying for a mighty movement of God's Holy Spirit in our midst as we seek to fulfill his work to make disciples who love God, love others and do good.
Have a blessed week. Today we begin the season of Lent. This Sunday we will share our first message in a new series entitled “The Gospel.” This is going to be a very significant and engaging series that takes us into a deeper understanding of what we really mean when talk about “The Gospel.” I promise, you are not going to want to miss a single week between now and Easter!
Love you all,
Pastor Steve