VISION and VOICE

As I’ve shared before, I’m relatively new to the Christian faith. It’s true that I was born into a Church of the Brethren family, but I quickly moved out of the orthodoxy of my childhood as a teenager. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God anymore; it was simply that the God I had felt and experienced seemed to be so much larger than the one the faith of my childhood seemed to paint and describe.

Hence my wilderness wanderings. Some might call them pagan or heretical. But I have the gift of hindsight now, almost two decades later. I can see God’s fingerprints all over and throughout those times. Life is a journey, and because of my own journeying, I find myself much less willing to criticize paths and choices others make. My eyesight is limited, and the truth is, sometimes you can see the fruit of the Spirit’s work in the lives of others, and at other times the work and its fruit are hidden. Like the plants in my newly created garden, new roots are being established in the transplanted life forms—new pathways being formed in the nutrient rich soil. And for awhile, the important things of growing will be going on underground, away from prying eyes, rather than above ground and in the light. But I can tell you from experience that the fruit WILL come on soon enough and we will have zucchinis galore and more tomatoes than we’ll know what to do with. This is the way it should be.

The way for my re-entrance into the Christian faith came through my appropriation of a new VISION. As I said earlier, I left the orthodoxy of my childhood faith because it wasn’t large enough to really converse with the God who created the majesty I glimpsed even through the light pollution of the Tucson evenings of my youth, those desert skies high and clear above—the spilled milk of God’s breakfast sloshed across the sky.

And then came the experience of communion and encounters with the radical grace of the God who doesn't knock at the door of my heart and ask for entrance, but who breaks out the tactical nuke of his son Jesus to explode all barriers between myself and his reconciling and transforming work.

Those experiences began to give me a new VISION, one that could reconcile the Christian vision with the inner sense of God I’d carried since my early childhood.

The Spirit didn’t stop there of course; Erin and I eventually found our way into a Jesus community that nurtured our faith and in me, nurtured the new VISION I’d been given. The discipleship I underwent challenged me to give VOICE to this new VISION. And to my surprise, I found that I had something tangible to say—to contribute to the symphony of praise lifted up by the faithful to the God of the universe for his goodness, his sufficiency, and the hopefulness of the transformation he brings to created life and living.

The words and phrases of my VOICE were stilted at the beginning. But the VISION in me created a passion to share the work of God going on inside of me and the will to persist through my stuttering. And in time, I came to realize that not only did I have something to say, my presence and my VOICE contributed to and worked with the VOICE and VISION of God in creation.

There are many ways to measure the health of the church. Metrics can tell us a great deal about what’s going on in a community. Take these statistics for instance. During my time at St. Mark's, the congregation's average weekly worship attendance has grown by 20+%, we’ve added members, and there is a Spirit of empowerment that fills the community.

These are all indications that as a community, people are responding to the VISION and the VOICE of God’s kingdom at work in this community. But the best metric of the work of the Spirit in any community comes through the VISION and VOICE that you have...your sense of where God is taking your community, and where God is taking you as his disciple, and how you share (VOICE) that VISION with the world and people around you.

So my questions—and challenge for you are these: Where IS God taking you and your community? What does our world look like on the horizon? And what do you have to say about that? What do you have to say about how God is at work in your life and in the lives of others? What is the passion that you have to share?

You may believe that you don’t have a VISION or a VOICE of faith. But you do. And if you aren’t incredibly careful, through the power of the Holy Spirit, they will find you!

Passionate for Jesus— Pastor Nathan