Saturday, February 1st, 2014click here for past entriesRenewing Our Vision
“I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isa. 43:19)
Truthfully, most of us have a hard time imagining anything new. While some people are certainly more visionary than others, the majority of us have a hard time envisioning anything other than what we have already seen. Dave Daubert offers this vivid illustration in his book, Living Lutheran: Renewing your Congregation:
In one of the first parishes he served, the congregation’s dream was to have more children and young people who were a part of the church. He went to work – first organizing a VBS for the neighbourhood children and then starting a Sunday school that was one, all-ages class from kindergarten right up to grade 6.
Before long, many of these same children started coming to worship as well, and a children’s message was added. However, that’s when the complaints began. They were too noisy in church. They fidgeted and moved from one seat to another. They got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the sermon.
You see, pretty much all of these children walked to church by themselves and came without their parents. Some of them only had one parent at home and some were living with foster parents or other relatives. They were more racially diverse and poorer than most of the core members of the congregation. So, even though there were now more children and young people in the church, they were not the children and young people that the members had imagined.
What the members actually had in mind when they said they wanted more children and young people are the children they pictured from back in the 1950’s – children who came well-dressed and sat with their parents and were quiet and well-behaved. As is true for so many of us, they could only imagine the future in terms of what they had already seen in the past.
However, we don’t live in the 1950’s any more – much to the chagrin of many! The world around us has changed, and people’s attitudes toward the church have changed, and our churches are not going to look like the ones that we remember from the past. However, this does not mean that God is no longer at work.
God continues to work in our world, often in new and surprising ways. God did not stop doing “a new thing” in the time of the prophet Isaiah. However, sometimes our vision takes a while to adjust in order to see what God is doing now.
It is for this reason that Dave Daubert thinks about vision as Purpose + Guiding Principles + Time. The time is necessary in order for the vision to emerge – but it begins with being clear about our purpose and guiding principles. He also speaks about vision as God’s dream for our future – a dream which we don’t always see right from the start.
During the coming year, we will continue to work on discerning God’s vision for us. May God grant us the eyes to see and the ears to hear!
In Christ,
Pastor Lynne Hutchison
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