“Thus says the Lord,... Do not remember
the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; Now it springs
forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah
43:18-19)
“Disturb us, Lord,
When we are too pleased with
ourselves,
When our dreams have come
true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord,
When with the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst for the waters of
life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord,
To dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where
storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes.
And to push us into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.”
[--Attributed to Sir Francis Drake, 1577]
This month our
church’s Long Range Planning Committee will be unveiling the first draft a new VISION direction for our church for the next 5-6 years. The committee spent all
of 2017 working, praying, researching, brainstorming, and discerning God’s guidance
in understanding what this Vision might include and entail. And soon, our
entire congregation will be invited to attend two “Town Hall” meetings where
we’ll all be able to hear where the committee has landed thus far, and to give
input, feedback, and suggestions for “next steps.”
Consequently, while
we still have a few more church-wide steps to take before our Vision can be
adopted and begin to be implemented, it will eventually become a
framework/standard that will guide our work and direction as a body of Christ
into the foreseeable future as we seek to be “Christians SERVING with love, CARING with compassion, and SHARING
Christ with boldness.”
So, as we here
at LaGrange First UMC begin to think about where God is leading, my prayer is
that we would be open to being “disturbed” a bit out of our comfort zones in
order to hear and understand God’s call and Vision for us as a church! I’ve heard it said before, “if God’s going to be our partner, then we
better be prepared to have some big plans!” May that be true for each of us, both corporately
as a church and individually in our personal lives, as well. Remember, God loves you and I do, too!
