Vision Document for Christ Our Redeemer
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“Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint”. (Prov. 29:18)
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“Vision without action is just dreaming.
Action without vision is just passing time.
Vision with action changes the world.”
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Our goal is to call people to embrace a Vision for a new Church in Roanoke. The Vision presents the significant features of our common life in Jesus Christ that we believe will please God (2 Cor. 5:9) and that we will labor in faith to bring into reality among us (I Thes. 1:3).
This Vision is not total or comprehensive; we will listen to God together and listen to each other for all the details of how to put flesh on these bones, but it is the Vision that will inspire and unite us, and direct and compel our life together. This Vision is not meant to be a critique of any other church. Rather, it is our compelling Vision of where we are headed, and a Vision of what we are going to believe that God wants to do among us.
This is a huge step of faith! This is a different vision for church. It is a conviction that “more of the same is not going to get us to where we need to be”; that God wants a people for Himself that will be together and do together the life of faith presented here. Expectancy then, should capture our hearts! We want to watch God work and experience the fingerprints of God on our lives as we take great big steps of faith together (Heb. 11:6).
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.”
What if we turned this observation upside down? What if we strove to actually “seek first His kingdom” with the same passionate intensity that many bring to sporting events? In other words, this is not a dream! We actually want this to become true in us; we desire to become a community of faith like this to the glory of God and for the world that we are living in. This is where we’re headed and by the grace of God, we will get there!
I. The Basic Building Blocks of our Church
1. Community
a.) We will do life together in a “community of kindness”. This was the model Jesus gave to His disciples. It was the inescapable ‘flavor’ of the New Testament church. And it is one of our deepest longings.
b.) “Ministry is people” – at its heart, all ministry is relational,not programmatic (Eph. 4:3). Community is the key ingredient in our spiritual growth and in our witness to the watching world (John. 17:23)
c.) Commitment to a small group or a discipleship group will be the expected norm for church members.
d.) We will practice hospitality, the discipline of welcoming people into our homes - and into our lives & hearts.
2. Spiritual Formation and Discipleship
a.) Spiritual maturity doesn’t happen while we sleep. We are commanded to “grow up” (Eph. 4:15), to “work out our salvation”(Phil. 2:12) and “press on to maturity”(Phil. 3:12f).
b.) We want to be a church where discipleship to Jesus’ teaching is neither optional nor accidental. The call is to follow Jesus, not just acknowledge Him. The call is to surrender to Jesus, not add Him to my life. The call is to die to self, not make a decision for Jesus.
c.) We want to teach people how to live the kind of life Jesus promised, not just show them how to go to heaven.
d.) This new life in Christ is still possible today while avoiding license on the one hand and legalism on the other by “speaking the truth in love”(Eph. 4:15) to one another.
a.) This means that we will think like missionaries in order to reach the lost in the Roanoke Valley taking creative risks for the sake of the Kingdom: great big steps of faith that will fail without God’s help.
b.) This means that we won’t attack the culture nor withdraw from it, but engage it seriously with a strong apologetic that speaks with both studied accuracy and biblical authority.
c.) This means that we are all in “full-time Christian ministry”
d.) This means that the primary work of the pastoral staff team will be “equipping the saints to do the work of the ministry (Eph. 4:12)
e.) Freedom in form: we want to express biblical truth in ways that are both relevant to our culture and biblical.
a.) Raising up, equipping and sending out the next generation is a significant component, but not our only focus. b.) It is our conviction that if we build a church primarily for ‘boomers’, it will not engage the next generation, but if we intentionally engage theTwenty-Somethings we will also draw the other generations.c.) We will have Interns (or Fellows) in our midst from the very beginning.
d.) Leaders will intentionally seek out “Joshuas” so that this principle of investing in others will become characteristic of the way we do everything.
II. The ‘Mortar’ Holding These Blocks Together
5. “Hallowed Be Thy Name!”
a.) A passionate attachment to the person of Christ. Our only goal will be that “We proclaim Him!” (Col. 1:28). “Our calling is to the service of worship, not just to worship services so all the church music battles often miss the main point.” (Jn. 4, Rom. 12:1)
b.) Zeal for the glory of God: the priorities of the Lord’s Prayer are answered in our prayers and our risks of love.
c.) Marketplace Theology: live all of our lives to the glory of God, not just one compartment labeled “spiritual stuff”. We will teach everyone to understand vocation.
d.) Holiness…not just raw passion, unbridled zeal or emotionalism…must adorn our lives. “Unless our heavenly Father is “Holy Father”, sin will be less sinful; and the Cross will be less needful; and the world’s need of a Savior will be less urgent; and Paul’s apologia: “For me, to live is Christ” is a foolish waste of an otherwise promising life.”
a.) We will cultivate a team approach to ministry and leadership that builds in accountability and recognizes that while leadership is vital, leadership ambitions do more harm than all pastor adulteries combined!
b.) The model for Christian growth is that of a body of people working together in their giftedness (Eph. 4), not of one omnicompetent person doing it all.
“The first reformation gave the Word of God back to the people, a second reformation is needed to give the work of God back to them as well”.
a.) Heresy is cruel to people’s lives. Jesus’ teachings are a blessing to people’s lives.
b.) Revelation is not restrictive, instead it brings “the glorious freedom of the children of God”(Rom.8:21), a freedom that is safe, whole, corporate and joyful.
c.) Orthodoxy will never go out of style and will satisfy our souls better than heterodoxy;
“We will not compromise solid, theological convictions that have stood the test of centuries of faith in order to gain a wider audience or build a bigger building.”d.) A church that has lost these commitments has lost any unique message - “good news” - to bring to the world.
a.) We want to be a “provocative community” (Tomlin) characterized by compassion & generosity that is willing to give ourselves away in service to “the least and the lost”. ‘Ministry happens’ it’s not always programmed. We want to place more emphasis on our life in Christ “away from Sundays”
b.)“Who is Jesus?” is answered best from our daily lives. The pulpit is not an ‘insider’ to our schools, business and marketplace like we are; we are the salt of the earth, so: “Come and see Jesus in our lives” not “Come to our church service”
“By incarnational we mean the church does not create sanctified spaces into which nonbelievers must come to encounter the gospel. Rather, the incarnational church dissembles itself and seeps into the cracks and crevices of a society in order to be Christ to those who don’t yet know Him”.>(fr. Stetzer, p. 162)c.)A church for Roanoke that “seeks the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you” (Jer. 29:7). We don’t want to be ‘accidentally’ in Roanoke, calling people to come to our facilities. The first word of the Great Commission is “Go!” not “Y’all come!” .
We will build bridges of understanding, cooperation and service to our community.
We will learn to love our neighbor as ourselves.
We will embrace and participate in the Arts.
We will not necessarily locate right downtown, but our proximity will allow the needs of our community to breathe down our necks.
- Integrity. Truth has to be lived out in every area of our lives. The requirement for leadership is to live a life that is “above reproach”(I Tim. 3:2).
- Authenticity & transparency: a “what you see is what you get” approach to ministry
- Accountability: regular reporting, supervision and performance appraisals will be built in because these make for safe and fruitful working places.
- Purpose shapes structure : we will build this church by creating structures around our common vision, not by mimicking ‘what’s always been done in the past’.
- Excellence: if it’s worth doing for the King, it’s worth doing w/excellence
Music Ministry: music is a very significant component of our worship. Worship does not “equal” music, but good worship has good music that borrows from many of the rich traditions that have gone before us.Working values:
- Blended worship is neither exclusively traditional nor contemporary. To decide that we will ‘only have choruses’ or that we will only sing hymns is like trying to teach English Literature but deciding beforehand that you will only read authors after World War II!
- Disappoint everybody! In today’s ‘worship wars’, everybody has their opinions about what makes for good worship. So we will be willing to not be long enough for some folks, not be short enough for others, not be loud enough for some and not be quiet and respectful enough for others, not be demonstrative enough for some and not be staid enough for others.
World Missions:
- to have a heart for Roanoke does not mean we will not share God’s heart for the world!
- we will make it our early goal to give 30% of our income ‘away from ourselves’ to either local or world missions.
Theological Formulation:1. “Our Beliefs” is a theological statement of our core beliefs intended to ground our church family in the conservative, evangelical, reformed and essential (primary) doctrines of the Christian faith.2. Our ”Vision Statement” about what it means to live and work together as the people of God arises from this essential framework and carries us beyond doctrinal formulation and out into the business of living by faith together as aliens and strangers in the midst of the world.
T. R. Oster
Revised, 11.15.06; 7.29.08
