A PEOPLE OF VISION.
Stuart Bell
There’s a building contractor working
out of a tiny hamlet called Olmarch near Tregaron and on the side of his van it
says, ‘London, Paris, New York, Olmarch’.
There’s a man with vision. It
is so typical of politicians, businessmen, lobby groups, and so untypical of the
Christians church.
Helen Keller once said, “What could
be worse than being born without sight? Being
born with sight and no vision”. Where
is the vision of the churches in Wales? Where is their vision for themselves, and where is their
vision for Wales? To have no
expectations of progress, improvement, going places leaves a church just doing
laps. Christmas is over, Lent comes
and goes, then its Easter, after that comes Whitsun, then the summer, then
it’ll be Harvest, Remembrance Sunday and we’re back to Christmas once again.
We’ve done another lap. Is
that all there is to our Christian life?
A statement which has shaken me and
really made me think seriously in recent years is this, that the future is not a
done deal. There are many
individuals and organisations and commercial enterprises who are already
planning to shape the future in their own interests.
Why shouldn’t Christians be doing something similar?
This sounds like just another bandwagon
with the Christian church catching up with our secular society.
But it isn’t a matter of Christians catching up with the world, but
rather of the world catching up with Christians.
Jesus had a vision statement concerning
the coming of the Kingdom of God. “Repent
for the Kingdom of God is at hand”, (Matt. 4:17) was his motto.
We know that he wasn’t talking about territory but about his kingship
expanding in the world one life at a time.
He used a few concise words to convey the heart of what he was doing.
In addition to the vision statement he
had a mission statement. He
didn’t only know where he wanted to go, but he also knew the means by which he
was going to get there. In Luke
4:18-19, Jesus tells us of his mission to the poor, the prisoners, the blind and
the oppressed and how he has come to declare to them the year of Lord’s
favour.
This vision and this mission was not
the result of a meaningless disjointed leap from Old Testament to New Testament.
It was a continuation and fulfilment of what had already been begun.
Jesus’ ministry was no grasshopper ministry jumping excitedly from one
thing to another at the mercy of enthusiasms and pressures from dissidents.
This was a divine and eternal vision, reaching out to rescue mankind and
bring them home. It has been at
heart of all the Lord has done from foundation of the world through the
ministries of the prophets, priests and leaders, through the work of Bethlehem,
Calvary and Pentecost.
Our vision and mission statements must stand at centre of that flood of
thinking and expression of the heart of God.
If we feel resistant to the idea of
having vision statements we need to remember that we already have one.
It may not be on paper in statements of intent or plans, special
activities, or strategies and publications but it is already there in our hearts
and dictates the way that we live our lives, and the way that we pray, and the
way that we plan for the future.
Many dioceses in the Church in Wales
have a strategy. It can be summed
up in one word. ‘Retreat’.
The current wisdom of the church is that we need to pull back to strong
centres and consolidate what remains. We
have a ‘Custer’s-last-stand’ mentality.
The intention is that we will pass the flag from one dying member to the
next and in that way we will keep the doors open for as long as possible.
But we make a great mistake if that is
to be our vision for the future. I
listened some years ago to the Chair of the Green Party being interviewed on the
radio. At one stage the party was
poised for major political advance. She
was asked why things had gone wrong, and her answer was ‘We didn’t plan to
succeed’. In the early days of
the last century the Methodist Forward Movement in South Wales adopted the
policy of consolidation after decades of enormous advance under the leadership
of courageous pioneers. The result?
They had passed their peak and never regained the initiative in the
evangelistic task of winning the nation to Christ.
George Barna from the US comments that
‘encouraging people to pledge themselves to survival is an admission of
defeat. Calling people to hold the
line is not a mission statement but
a death warrant’. Margaret
Thatcher said something similar, that ‘retreat as a tactic may sometimes be
necessary, but as a settled policy it eats at the soul’.
Another vision statement of the Church
in Wales is that we must re-organise.
It sounds like a good suggestion because it gives an air of movement
whilst we stand still. Cardinal
Newman described the church as an equestrian statue poised to leap forward, but
when you came back years later it was still in the same position.
The Roman centurion Gaius Petronius has a devastating comment which ought
to put paid to all suggestions of re-organisation.
He said, ‘We trained hard but it seemed that every time we were
beginning to form up into teams we would be re-organised.
I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by
re-organising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of
progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation’.
So if we are not to retreat and we are
not to re-organise what are we to be doing, where should we be going?
Anywhere so long as it is forward!
Let the leaders lead.
God never gave a vision to a committee in the Bible.
Usually he gave it to individuals and left them to cast that vision for
others to follow. So it is no good
putting it as item 8 on the PCC agenda. Vision
is not the result of consensus, it should result in consensus, and it will come
initially from the leaders of the church. Leaders
are God’s gift to church and are meant to lead.
The Bible has got a high view of leadership. “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority”.
(Heb 13:17) It is a shame
that many Christian leaders haven’t got a high view of themselves.
It has nothing to do with how gifted they are, but how Lord sees them.
He has invested them with authority.
Let’s take risks.
This is surely the nature of faith.
We believe that we have heard from God, then let’s follow that leading
all the way, even if the ride is a bit bumpy from time to time.
There will always be blockers of any new initiative.
That is guaranteed. We
can’t expect 100% support. There’s
going to be friction. Some years
ago a human response to innovation was identified which is described as a
Natural Distribution Curve. Every
time a new idea is suggested then there will be 16% ready, 17% positive, 34%
open, 17% negative, 16% resistant. When
the early church which couldn’t have been more vibrant and on-fire if it tried
was faced with the choice of either building a solely Jewish church or of
offering the Gospel to Gentiles there was friction.
Some went with it immediately whilst others dragged their heels.
The church didn’t have a world vision but God did.
So through spiritually hungry non-Jews, a vision from God, and a
persuadable disciple the Christian faith reached the Gentiles, and us.