Vineyard Church of Knox County
Where this Ship is Heading (Part I)
I recently saw a slide show on the Internet consisting of wonderful pictures taken on one of the aircraft carriers deployed in the Persian Gulf. The photographer's work provided a broad picture of life on the carrier: from soldiers "power-napping" and playing football, to sunsets and launched missiles. This particular carrier was heading back to the U.S. Their mission had been accomplished so they had been called home.
As I read about this group of people on this huge boat, I immediately thought of the church as being like an aircraft carrier. Think about it. We are a group of people called together to complete a particular mission given to us by our Authority. Also, not every aircraft carrier has the exact same mission, but each one is part of the same team trying to accomplish the same goal: win the war. Similarly, each church has a unique mission given by God yet is a part of the whole Church Universal that is working toward the same goal: God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
As the leadership of our new church-plant tries to listen for God’s direction, we, like the leaders of the aircraft carriers, are listening for our mission to come down from our Commander. We are currently forming a mission statement that we think communicates what God has called us to do, along with a specific strategy to accomplish that mission. We are also developing what we call “Core Values” that will provide direction and boundaries for the ministry of our church.
We are excited to share these foundational principles with you so you can be sure that this is the ship on which you want to sail and to which you want to contribute. Soon we plan to invite all of you to an inspiring gathering sometime in late May to celebrate what God has done and to share what we think God is asking us to do in the future. This will be a very important event in the life of this new church, so I hope you plan to be there!
The future of our church is not completely clear (which keeps us on our knees in prayer!), but we are sure that God wants this church to be built around and upon small groups of people, what we are calling “home groups,” rather than upon a large-group Sunday morning service. Will we have a Sunday morning weekly service? Yes. But not right away (our tentative plan is to begin in September). We want to build up the home groups, sharing our lives together and learning to minister to one another, before we begin a large-group Sunday morning service. So, join us in really striving to build up the existing home groups so we can multiply and divide into more groups. That way more and more people can experience this wonderful mission God has us on!
We look forward to that Sunday morning when God wants us to take that next step in the life and ministry of this church by conducting weekly services. But for now we are doing our best simply to follow His lead and enjoying where we are without worrying about the future. “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow,” Jesus (Matthew 6:33 in The Message translation).
