Dear CLC Family,
Following
is the Vision for CLC for 2014 that I presented at the CLC annual meeting
yesterday, March 9, 2014.
It’s nothing new, but it’s real to me and I believe it reflects
God’s heart for the world.
It is the outgrowth of the fundamental meaning of the cross and the
resurrection. I
love how Mark portrayed CLC as Changing Lives with Christ.
I hope you take time to read it and consider its implications.
God
is great, Jeff
1.
That each of us experience the deep, living, energizing, freeing,
happy, extravagant Breath and Grace of God that keeps on giving and giving and
giving and giving
and that each of us begins to
taste that this Breath of God is better than life itself, that we are safe
secure and full of overflowing life in God’s Good world.
o
That in 2014 God gives each of us a hunger for more and more and
more of God and that this hunger results in each of us taking control of what or
who mentors us.
o
We are all mentored by something and someone.
We are all students, learners and disciples.
This isn’t negotiable.
We are mentored, taught, shaped and discicpled by TV, Hollywood, ideologies,
our circle of friends, our prejudices, the ad industry, the internet, our
culture, the academic world, and more.
My/our vision is that we grow as a church family and individually to the
point where we feel increasing compelled by, to the point where we find
ourselves succumbing to, the pull of the Spirit which draws us to be mentored by
Jesus.
o So that each of us in the family find ourselves succumbing to the
pull to read scripture, especially the Gospels.
o That we succumb to the call of the Spirit to just stop and listen first
and then to talk to him.
o That we grow in the confidence that Jesus actually knows what he’s
talking about and that confidence results in the scary risk of actually doing
what he tells us to do.
o That for
each of us God is just the greatest thing in the world and Jesus is greatest,
most brilliant, most wise, most intelligent, most trustworthy person/Lord/Master
in the World, and that we are happy to be one his followers, and that it is just
normal for us to express that and it does get expressed because we’re so happy
about God other’s notice God too.
o That it becomes the most natural thing in the world to explain to
someone why God makes us happy.
I know nothing about refrigerators but I can explain why it makes me
happy to have one.
o That we are people of overflow.
o And just like some say, “I listen to Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz or Oprah,"
that it would be as natural as that for us to say “I follow Jesus, he’s my
mentor for doing life”.
2.
That we become generous,
promiscuous,
indiscriminate Grace Givers:
that we not only breathe deeply the breath of God ourselves but that that
we breathe the breath of God into our work places and homes and neighborhoods
and community.
o That every one of us becomes
like an enzyme that transforms lives and communities.
That we are like a
good infection, infecting our worlds with the Kingdom of Heaven.
o In a world that draws, sets and defends boundaries, where Christians even
study a best selling book called Boundaries,
in a world that works to create insiders and outsiders, in an
increasingly tribalized world, that we instead are a church that majors in
removing the categories of insider and outsider.
o That we are not satisfied to have a good church with good people.
God may bring us new problems with people because different kinds of
people, people not like us,
keep coming to us and we keep going to them.
o That God, starting with Sunday mornings, turns each of us into “just
walk across the room” people,
people who, yes are drawn to their friends, but who just can’t walk
past some individual or couple standing alone, who, while talking to friends
can’t keep from noticing those people that no one else seems to be noticing.
o God’s spirit is just too compelling.
God turns us into serial “walkers across rooms”.
We simply cannot
escape our call to be doors through which others taste heaven touching
earth.
3.
That God turn every one of us into “Total Life Worshippers”.
o Last Sunday we heard it said that Christians don’t go to work to
do what we are paid to do, rather we go to work to do what you are made to do.
That’s worship . . . . . when I place the totality of my life before
God as an offering.
o That we see that leading my family is worship, interacting at work with
my colleagues is part of my working hard is an act of worship, that coming home
and reconnecting with my spouse is an act of worship,
that when we “get this” then singing is also worship.
Without it singing is just singing.
Without this sermons are just forgettable self help tips.
o Other ways to put this include:
Being Miss ional, Being Stewards of all of Life, Being on mission as we
leave, Going back to our World as a mission field, Evangelism.
*****
If
these three things happen then we will be living into the whole purpose for our
being here.
The picture that God gave us of being an airport of extravagant grace
where those who land breath deep the breath of God and that breath of god is
like a wind that compels all of us outward to be a breath of God to others who
then ask us “where did you fly out of? And you’ll say “well let me tell
you about it”.
How?
What’s your strategy?
1. For my part:
I will do my best to teach, preach,
encourage, and live this way myself so that we are increasingly connected
to, trusting of, and mentored by God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit in particular
through the Bible.
I will do my best
to help each of us to know Bible well it mentors us.
That’s my personal strategy.
2. Organizationally:
We will do everything we can to connect everyone to the vibrancy of God
found in and through the Body of Christ, doing through Groups, service, tasks,
and personal relationships. This is a short sentence, yet everything we do
ultimately comes down to this.
For more:
follow on Twitter @jefflampl
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