Last week, a team of for speakers led us along the path the PCC had taken at their Away Day a few Saturdays ago.
Mark Sansome explained that a mission was something that was timeless. St John’s in 2050 could adhere to the same principles. It spoke of our purpose.
A vision was something that was measurable. We would be able to see at the end of three years whether or not we had succeeded in realising it. It speaks of our future.
Tom Vandamme led us through the mission statement and the vision statement – in other words our purpose and our future. He showed us how the church logo of the lighthouse was
closely related to both.
Our purpose (mission)
To shine the light of Christ in our neighbourhood:
Proclaiming the Good News.
Building a worshipping community.
Enabling people to serve God
Our future (vision)
We will be a thriving church…
With a growing membership,
Seeing more people involved,
Always looking to God to transform both our lives and our community.
Raymond picked up the idea of transformation in the last line. We have been thinking about the idea of “morphing” over the last few weeks. This is fundamental to our evangelism. We do not encourage evangelism if we focus on telling one another to evangelise. We do that by being an authentic Christian community where God changes lives through energising worship, good teaching, a sense of belonging and community and where we learn things like love, kindness and generosity.
Anna Richardson spoke on implementation. This is the beginning not the end. It is both about being and about doing. The PCC has a programme going forward and our next meeting on 19th November is dedicated to turning vision into reality. We will be using the APCM in 2019 as a target.
Roses and red – violets are blue
We have produced these two statements on a red card and a blue card and we are asking the congregation to regularly use them in praying for the church. Pray through the red card one week and the blue one the next, that all the things on there might become a reality in our fellowship. We aim to make sure every single member has a red and a blue card in their hands by 18th November. That applies also to our children and young people .