Our Kingdom Concept
This past week our Leadership Team met and began work on our Kingdom Concept. The questions we addressed were:
Local Predicament – “What are the unique needs and opportunities where God has placed us?”
Collective Potential – “What are the unique resources and capabilities that God brings together in us?”
Apostolic Esprit – “What particular focus most energizes and animates our leadership?”
Here are the results:
Local Predicament
- Cultural Christianity
- Lack of Community Service
- Transient connecting with the established [busyness]
Collective Potential
- Passion to love and serve people
- Inviting place to worship
- A lot of gifted people [Musicians, teachers, nurses, etc in Crosslink]
Apostolic Esprit
- Helping people live the abundant life [finding their kingdom potential]
- Building authentic relationships
- Missions
Now the task is to take these categories and craft and identify statement that becomes our Kingdom Concept. Here is the statement……
“Our church exists to glorify God and make disciples by……..”
This is not a mission statment, or vision statement but an identity statment. Take some time and begin to brainstorm your thoughts! No idea is a bad one at this point. Pray for Holy Spirit inspiration! I look forward to interacting with you over the blog! Take the time to check it ever couple of days! God bless!
Pastor Ken
Posted in Crosslink
November 12th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
It was hard for me to finish this statement in one thought and say everything I want to say, but I think I would finish it something like this…”by introducing people to the Living Savior and helping them to realize their kingdom potential through living the abundant life.” As we look at the three questions we addressed, people..both inside and ouside of the walls of the church.. need to have a true, authentic encounter with Jesus before they can begin to realize the potential and live the life they have been designed to live. This is the responsibility of the Church…to preach the gospel and make true disciples. We must help people to overcome the “cultural” Christianity they embrace so easily here and link people directly to the Saviour through an encounter with Him first. We also have the responsibility to make disciples, teach them and train them to use the gifts they have. That taps into the collective potential. I believe the authentic relationships and the abundant life living is a natural offspring of that. I don’t see our mission much different than the mandate in Matthew 28, but I do see it defined more specifically for Crosslink as we look at the results listed above. Make those results the objectives that Crosslink embraces and tackles and I believe this body of believers has the roadmap for our specific calling from the Lord.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
I’ve thought a lot about this identity statement presented above. In seeking to finish this sentence I’ve tried to take a Gospel centered approach that focused on the eternal life in Christ in addition to the temporal life in Christ. In doing so I would change the last part of the sentence from:
“Our church exists to glorify God and make disciples by……..” to:
Our church exists to glorify God by worshiping Him through faith in Jesus Christ.
The reason I sought this approach is because worship is the only eternal aspect of the Christian faith that is performed both in the temporal and eternal life. Discipleship, Evangelism, Outreach and all these other actions will soon be at an end, however worship will be eternal. Worship is, and should be, the fuel that ignites a passion for Discipleship, Evangelism, Outreach, Service and Missions.
Second to this; if we are looking for mission, purpose or identity statements, there is no need to re-invent the wheel. Such statements are not a new idea. The church has been writing documents such as these for thousands of years. These statements can be found in the old confessions and statements of faith. The Westminster Shorter Catechism begins by addressing this very question: what is the chief end of man… or put in current terms… why does man exist? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. We glorify God by having faith driven worship in His Son Jesus Christ. Then, faith driven worship ignites the fires of service. So we can apply this same principle to the church. Why does our church exist… we exist to glorify God and enjoy Him forever!
November 14th, 2009 at 1:09 am
Our Church exists to Glorify God and make Disciples by example. I believe it begins with me to show in my life the Love that I have for the Creator and to know and understand the love He has for me to give His only Son life up that I would have eternal life (relationship}The Churches need to teach this type of Love Rather than commitment or service For I believe if You LOVE God with all your heart and all your soul you will be commited and have a passion to serve God in the church and in the comunity, in the work place.Instead of family being commited if they would first show and learn to love each other as Christ Loves them they would also have a passion to serve and tell other about Him.But again it start with me I need to be in Prayer,reading His word more being a example Praising Jesus for the Relationship that I do have with him and repenting for those times when I do stray I am Glad his LOVE is everlasting. Amen
November 16th, 2009 at 4:04 am
I appreciate the comments. I would love to hear from the others on this idea of the “Kingdom Concept.” Remember it helps to answer “What can we do better than 10,000 others?” So take a stab at “We exists to glorify and make disciples by…..” This statement is important because it gives us a starting point for the “Vision Frame” that we will be working on in the coming months.