On the Heroes team is James, a young African American from the South with a perfectly muscled male figure a little bit of an attitude; and Tom, an upper middle-aged Caucasian fire fighter from New York who comes across as being a little on the arrogant side.

Now both of these guys were exemplary in character and were great players of the game the first times around- Tom even won.

But this season, with too many cooks in the kitchen, their true colors are showing through a little too much. And because both of the guys are leaders of some sort in their own right, they’re butting heads and have polarized the team into two sides: Team James and Team Tom.

James’ style this time around portrays authenticity. He is ‘real’ with everyone on his team and is not affraid to share his true feelings and emotions with them. Often in leadership, this is a great value to show. But James gets offended easily and airs a little too much of his dirty laundry which ruffles his teammates’ feathers- especially Tom’s.

Tom, on the other hand, has a different approach. He is a type-A personality who wants to let everyone know that he’s in charge. If he has an opposing opinion about a circumstance happening in his team, he let’s everyone know and tries to bully his other teammates into agreeing with him. When someone doesn’t agree with him, even after the bullying, he foolishly acts arrogantly and childishly torwards them- eventually writing them off and treating them as enemies (i.e. James).

Both guys come across as being decent guys, especially after watching them the first time around, and especially Tom. But when pit into a group of leaders chaos ensued.

I don’t really have a statement to make, but a question. Whose team are you on? Tom’s or James’? What leadership style works best? Open, authentic, and wearing your emotions on your sleeve? Or bold, aggressive, and bossy?

Realistically, I don’t think either is better than the other. Both philosophies are flawed. I think that a leader needs to display a little of
James (authenticity) and a little of Tom (boldness). But mainly a leader needs humility, wisdom, a good work ethic, and the ability to come before God and ask for direction and help in what he is lacking.

(Building Block #2) Vision- Who We Are

“Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”

-Proverbs 29:18 (KJV)

With our Mission in focus, it is crucial that we are given a vision of how it will be accomplished and what it will look like as we accomplish it.

It is so true what King Solomon wrote in Proverbs nearly 3,000 years ago! Without vision, the people will perish. Other Bible translations say the people ‘will be unrestrained’. We need a vision to aim for, to hope for, and to dream of as we are taking part in the mission. If we don’t have one, we will have nothing to unite us together and nothing to keep us on mission- we will perish.

We choose our Vision Statement to be the ultimate description of ‘who we are’ in Christ and ‘who we desire to be’. This vision is our slogan- our battle cry! It is our intent that it would define us to those who encounter our people or something with our name or logo on it.

And just like the Gospel, like Jesus, and like our Mission; our Vision should never change, only our plans or our methods.

Sam Walton

Sam Walton’s, the founder of Walmart, Vision Statement for Walmart from the beginning was, “Providing value to the customer in order to make people’s lives better.” And his vision never changed. Plans came and went. Methods were constantly changed. New and creative ideas were always experimented with, but the vision stayed the same and the company was and is successful because of it.

Big Fish, Little Tank:

Without Vision; our boundaries, our boarders, and our bowls are too small. Without Vision; we will never grow to our fullest potential to reach the lost for Christ. We will be shooting into the dark with no target to aim for.

Big Fish Little Tank Continued

Without having a Vision or even simply having a small Vision; it is almost as if you have an anti-Vision: a limit that you place on yourself or your organization of how far you will go and how large you will grow- the answer to which is very little or not at all.

In a very small bowl, a goldfish will not grow to its largest possible size. In a large bowl, the goldfish has great potential to reach his largest possible size. Because there he has room to grow; he can see a greater distance in which he can travel and at some genetic level his body will know how large he can get.

Often times as a church, we shoot ourselves in the foot. Too often, we are like the large goldfish in the small bowl. When people ask us about our church, we say things like, “it’s a little church behind Les Schwab” or, if you’re more religious, “we’re a small body of Believers who are faithful with what God has given us.” But if you say that we are small when you are telling others about our church, often what they hear is,” we’re too small for you”, “we don’t want to grow”, or “we don’t want you here with us.” And if you say that we are a small body of faithful Believers; what you are really saying is that your relationship with Jesus is something that is personal and something to horde jealously to yourself. The truth is that you cannot be faithful unless you are being FRUITFUL.

But if we had Vision for this church; who we could be and where the Lord could take us, then we would have great unlimited room to grow and faith in God to see it through.

So in response to our Mission Statement, our Vision Statement is:

“Our Vision is to be a Community of Grace, Love, and Hope.”

We choose this Vision Statement because:

- We are (and we will strive to be) a community, a people, of Grace. Grace is when you get exactly what you don’t deserve. Grace is what God has given us. When we absolutely did not deserve it God gave us His Son as a living sacrifice to live a life that we could not live, to die a death we deserved to die, and to rise from the grave to conquer sin and death so that we can have an everlasting relationship with Him.

Grace is what we choose to offer those in our community- welcoming them with open arms regardless of who they are or what they have done into the new life that Christ offers them.

- We are (and we will strive to be) a community, a people of Love. Love is what you do to show someone how much they are worth. God is Love. In Love, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God loved us first and because of that, we choose to Love Him and the community around us.

- We are (and we will strive to be) a community, a people of Hope. Hope is something that we can assuredly look forward to. Our Hope is found in Christ. The Hope we have is that someday Jesus Christ is returning to restore His creation to perfection, to rid the world of sin and death, and to

Why We Choose This Vision Statement Continued, Hope

forever have fellowship with and reign over those He has saved. We choose to live out this blessed Hope in our lives so that all those we come into contact with can be impacted by it.

With a beautiful God-sized Vision such as this; there is no limit to what God could do through this church for our community if, and only if, we are willing to live out such a radical Vision-based lifestyle.

This brings us to our next Building Block:

Let’s talk about your experience at local establishments.

What motivates you to visit a new restaurant or store?

What are some things you might do before visiting, to make sure that you will visit?

Upon visiting, what are the first things that you notice?

What are other important factors during your visit that you take in?

What is the most important thing to you during your visit?

What will make you return?

What would make you never return?

What would make you tell a friend about this business, or invite them to visit it with you?

This is the Reality of Church in Our Culture As Well:

If a mattress store, who sells MATTRESSES, puts forth great amounts of money, creativity, effort, sweat and tears in order to get a customer to come in, buy a MATTRESS, tell their friends, and come back; we too as a church need to be serious and intentional about how the public perceives us, how we market the Gospel, how we receive people when they join us, how we present the Gospel to them, how we can get them to come back, and how we can get them to invite their friends to come check us out!!!!!!

We have, now more than ever before, great potential to reach the lost for Christ through this church if we would be obedient to the mission that God has given us and on board with the overall vision that I present to you today.

Culture always changes. New cultures always emerge. Old ways of doing things always die out.

Christianity has always made attempts to keep their message the same, while changing their methods in order to keep up with culture and to reach it. Sometimes this is done with great success; sometimes it is not.

The early Church was very good at this. The Apostle Paul used philosophies, religion, and art from the cultures he visited in order to win them for Christ and plant new churches within the area. Because of his efforts, we are here today. The early Church adopted the rhythms of pagan holidays and replaced them with new holidays to reflect the core doctrines of the Christian faith, so that people could be reached. And because of pioneers like Martin Luther, the printing press was used to distribute Scripture into the hands of the common person so that the religious establishment could no longer lord it over people.

Today revolutionaries of the faith are utilizing the internet, social networking, secular music, podcasting, mobile phone applications, and controversial culturally relevant preaching to reach the lost in huge ways not seen for generations.

We become so inward focused, that it’s hard to know what to do when someone new wanders into the tank.

We’ve created our own sub-culture in the tank that the new fish we are trying to catch cannot relate to.

While the early Christian Church adopted cultural practices of the ancient Roman and Jewish worlds to catch new fish for Christ and ultimately let Christ transform them, we have expected the fish outside of our tank to adopt to the culture of our tank before they are welcomed and can be transformed by Christ.

This is the exact opposite of the Biblical approaches of evangelism by Jesus and His early followers. And it is the exact opposite practice of Christians in countries where Christianity is spreading like wildfire and churches in America where new believers are being welcomed into the Kingdom in astronomical numbers and revival is happening.

Our mission as a church must define- in a broad sense-why we exist.

We, as Christians, believe that God has commanded us to take part in an extraordinary mission with Him on earth. God by no means needs us to complete this mission, but He has chosen us to work with Him and we consider that to be a great privilege and honor.

As mentioned above, and reiterated here, this mission was given on the day Jesus ascended from the earth, after dying on a cross and rising from the dead, into heaven. We can read about His command to us in Matthew 28:18-20

¹⁸Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

So in response to Christ’s command to us, we have adopted this simple Mission Statement:

“Our mission is to connect people to an everlasting committed relationship with Jesus Christ and with others.”