A few years ago, the church where I serve adopted our church vision: Worship God, Prepare Disciples, Serve the World. It is similar to the Acts 16:5 Initiative focus of glorifying God, making disciples, and meeting human need. Since most of us in churches are starting a new program year, I thought it would be helpful to revisit the vision and see how it is playing out in three areas: our personal lives, our ministry teams/groups, and in our congregations. In three blog entries, I’m going to ask a series of questions that I invite you to pray about and to act upon from the standpoint of where your congregation is. In this article, I invite you to reflect on these questions in regard to your personal life.
In Personal Lives:
1) Are you taking time to glorify God in your own life? Are you attending worship
services on a regular basis? Are you taking time to worship God daily?
Are you reading the Bible and spending time with God? Are you inviting
others to worship with you or to attend a worship service with you? What
worship service in the last six months really got your heart pumping in
God’s holy presence?
2) In what part of your life are you being prepared as a disciple? Are you in a small
group, a study group and/or a church school class? Are you not only reading the
Bible but also studying it? With what portion of your life are you devoting
and developing mature faith in Jesus Christ? Who are you inviting to walk
with you in discipleship? Who are you discipling in the Christian walk?
3) How are you meeting human need? How do you offer service in Christ’s name to
others? When is the last time you participated in a service ministry of the
church or in a community organization? To what form of mission is God
nudging you to pursue?
It might be overwhelming to read all these questions. You may have answers to some of them and not to others. I encourage you to pray about these questions and, then, to write answers to them in a journal or record them in the notes section of your smart phone. Later you can go back and see what movement you have made, with God’s help. Perhaps the vision doesn’t fit with where you are in your personal life. You may want to form your own vision. Whatever your vision is, God gives all of us opportunities to glorify God, make disciples. and meet human need every day. It’s a vision that offers us a great adventure in faith.
Vital and energized people create vital and energized churches! That is what God has called us to be and d0. May we reflect our love of God in the way we personally live and fulfill God’s vision.
Anne Clifton Hebert
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