Evangelism

The Church Vision Hamster Wheel

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Your church doesn’t need a vision statement. In 12Church, we are figuring out how to be and make disciples in this time and this place, which includes of course, being all in on mission with Jesus. I really wish that’s what all churches were obsessing about rather than going through all of these exercises, trying to figure out their unique vision and unique mission and all that kind of stuff. There is a little place for that, but not the level of obsession that I’m seeing in many churches.

Before I address the fruitless, time-wasting, unbiblical practice of church vision statements, a bit of background. I pastored three different churches over 18 and a half years and spent some time in the professional speaking, internet marketing world. For the last decade plus I’ve been a transitional pastor and coach going into churches typically in crisis between lead pastors, walking through a process, getting them back to a semblance of health and helping them find a new leader.

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Who Are The Fish?

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The big question of the day is who are the fish? Who are you fishing for? I was going to call this topic, who are you hunting, but the appropriate bit of biblical metaphor is fishing. He calls us to fish for people, not hunt for people though. Perhaps if Jesus was in a different cultural context, he would have used the phraseology of hunting and made it work.

But we will stick with the biblical picture of fishing and ask the question who are the fish, you know, in business and marketing. There’s a lot of talk about target audience and customer avatar. It almost sounds like a new agey kind of thing.

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Swing Thought For 2021

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I just had the privilege a couple of days ago on the first Sunday of the year to preach my first live sermon since mid-March of 2020. Actually, yesterday I did two prerecorded messages at two different churches. I spoke live at Fort St. John, British Columbia which is a church we did a transitional pastorate in several years ago and where we are currently living right now. The title of the message was “A Swing Thought or 2021.”

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