Where Do our Vision and Mission Intersect?

• LakeView's Vision: To Make God Famous (Hab 3:2)
• LakeView's Mission: To Lead People Into a Growing Relationship with Jesus Christ (Matt 28:18-20)

  
      Where they Intersect:

"The deepest passion of the heart of Jesus was not the saving of men,

but the glory of God;

and then the saving of men, because that is for the glory of God."

                                                                           - G. Campbell Morgan, The Gospel According to John (Revell 1986), 270.

LakeView Hosting EFCA Externally-Focused Church Conference

When I arrived at LakeView Church, one of the first books we went through as a staff was The Externally-Focused Church. It's a very helpful challenge to take our eyes of ourselves and our own needs and to engage the community with the love of Christ. It has informed and inspired us as we've tried to increasingly make this a part of our vision. We're just taking baby steps, but at least there's movement, and in the right direction.

This April 8th & 9th, LakeView is privileged to be hosting The Externally-Focused Church Conference for pastors, staff and lay people in the Forest-Lakes District of our Association, the Evangelical Free Churches of America. This is going to be a great conference. Eric Swanson will be here. Yeeha.

"If your church vanished, would your community weep? Would anyone notice? Would anyone care?"

That question, from the book, haunts me. And it should every pastor. After all the self-justifying and excuses are done, that question really gets to the heart of whether we exist for ourselves or for others.

Humility: True Greatness

A small, but convicting book I've been working through. It dovetails well with our vision of making God famous. We become more consumed with him the less we are consumed with ourselves. And the less we are consumed with ourselves, the more we want to see Him center-stage.

"It is evident that a man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and comes down after such contemplation to look into himself."  
                                                     - John Calvin.

Vision Verse & Cheeseheads

Yesterday Eric preached on our Vision. Great message. In closing the services, I shared a verse I'd just come across that echoes our vision of making God famous:

"Your name and renown are the desire of our hearts" (Is 26:8b)

May it increasingly be so for me, and for us!

Also closed with the benediction: "God bless. And 'Go Packers!'" And they did. Superbowl Champions.  Most viewed programme in history. 111 million viewers, eclipsing the 106 million viewers of the1983 finale of MASH. Move over Alan Alda.

Proud to be a Wisconsonite/Cheesehead.

The Last and Best and Funniest Word on Vision

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIFx_GQIfSk

LakeView's Vision & Some Painful Stats

This weekend, we start a 2-week series on Vision & Mission titled "Compass."
Here's our Vision for 2010-12, followed by why I am more convinced than ever that it is urgently relevant.

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Our 2010-2012 Vision: Making God Famous (Habakkuk 3:2)

“LORD, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O LORD.

Renew them in our day, in our time make them known. In wrath remember mercy.” (Hab 3:2)

Over these next two years the focus of our vision will be spreading the fame and glory of our God who has shown us such mercy in Christ and desires all to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4).

This means that on campus we will seek to create a warm and inviting place where anyone can come as they are, learn about Jesus at their own pace and, like Him, grow in wisdom and favor with God and men (Luke 2:52).

Off campus, we will look for opportunities to serve the people of Stoughton in order to not only show but also tell them of the love of Christ, who came not to be served but to serve and give His life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).

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Why is this so relevant?

Recent research in a book I'm reading:

"58 percent of those studied stopped coming to church because of relational problems. For example, 26 percent said church members seemed judgmental or hypocritical; 20 percent didn't feel connected to people in the church; and 15 percent said churches were either unfriendly, unwelcoming, or cliquish." - Ed Stetzer & Philip Nation, Complelled By Love (New Hope, 2008), 83.

This is not what God intends His Church to be. What have we become? And why?