Recently our Leadership Team met for a retreat to finish the Vision Framework.  We were able to work through the four sides of the vision frame.  Mission, Motives, Map and Measures.  Here’s what God gave us as we met:

MISSION – What are we doing?

- We link people to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

MOTIVES -  Why are we doing it?

 - Worshipping as a lifestyle

-  Building Christ-centered relationships with people

- Developing and reproducing leaders

- Being a missional people

- Building healthy and strong families

MAP – How we are doing it?

Link to God – Link to People – Link to Service

 MEASURES – What does it look like when we are successful?

 - A knowledge of God’s Word

- Hear and obey God’s Word

- Tell others about Jesus Christ

- Compassionate towards others

- Serving and giving genersouly

- Committed to prayer

- Carrying God’s Word to others

There is still some “tweaking” that needs do be done.  Take the time to read through this framework and feel free to shoot me an email if you have questions:  ken@lifeatthelink.org.  We will unveil some of this to our congregation on Vision Sunday, January 31st.

1. Teach them, using God’s Word (Deut. 6:4-9)

2. Tell them what’s right and wrong (I King 1:6).

3. See them as gifts from God (Ps. 127:3)

4. Guide them in godly ways (Prov. 22:6)

5. Discipline them (Prov. 29:17)

6. Love them unconditionally (Luke 15:11-32)

7. Do not provoke them to wrath (Eph. 6:4)

8. Earn their respect by example (I Tim. 3:4).

9. Provide for their physical needs (I Tim. 5:8).

10. Pass your faith along to them (II Tim. 1:5).

From elbourne.org

Our CL leadership met this morning and began the journey of building our “Vision Frame.”  It is the container that carries the vision.  Before I go any further let me ask you a question?  Don’t think too much to the answer to this question.  Say, the first thing that comes to your mind.  Are you ready?  Here we go.  Are you more like a “microwave” or “crockpot”?   Ok, I admit it I’m more like a MICROWAVE!  I bet that was a surprise to you wasn’t it?  I’ve never liked to wait on things!  I use to go to the gym to workout, and if I didn’t see “the guns” in two weeks I wanted to hang it up!  It’s been the same thing in ministry.  I think a lot of Lead Pastors are like “Microwaves.”  We don’t like waiting.  We forget that good things come to those that wait.

God has been teaching me some things through our leadership, and our vision frame work.  I’ve learned a lot through a guy by the name of Will Mancini.  He wrote a great work called, “Church Unique.”  He uses a framework that has the following components:

MISSION [MANDATE] – It answers “what are you doing?”

VALUES [MOTIVES] – It answers “Why are we doing it?”

STRATEGY [MAP] – It answers “How are we doing it?”

MEASURES [MARKS] – It answers “When are we successful?”

While the frame is FIXED what comes out of it is FLUID: THE VISION PROPER!

So today we started down the journey of building the MISSION side of the frame.  I really wanted to walk away with that side of the frame completely done.  I wanted to “NUKE IT” and God wanted me to take off the lid and stir!  Keep praying more to follow!

What is a parent’s priority in parenting?  That’s a question that we all need to ask as a parent.  What is our priority?  There are so many opportunities for kids these days, but what does your child, and my children truly need?  God’s Word teaches us that the greatest priority for a parent is to gradually transfer a child’s dependence away from them until it rests solely on God.  On Sunday, January 10 we will address how this happens in our message series “Parenthood.”  Let me encourage you to be there to listen, but you can also go to www.lifeatthelink.org and click on the podcast.

I would like to point our parents to some good resources after these messages on parenting.  Here is a resource I will mention on Sunday that I would like to encourage you to check out.  We have some of these resources you could take a look at, and borrow.  If you feel they will help you in the spiritual training of your children I would encourage you to subscribe to it.  You can go to www.familytimes.org and subscribe.  They will send you a monthly packet.  Each packet contains a resource teaching on a virtue [i.e. forgiveness, honesty, patience, etc.].  There are tools to use at bed time, rise time, drive time and meal time.  For about $8-12 a month you can get this resource.  I would strongly encourage it.  It’s patterned after the verses found in Deuteronomy 6:6-9.  If you get a chance take a look at these verses.  I look forward to seeing you on Sunday!

once again the resource link is www.familytimes.org

Our leadership has been working hard the past few months to answer the question “What can we do better than 10,000 others?”.  At our last leadership meeting I believe God gave us some synergy around the following statement as an answer to that question: We make disciples and glorify God by……….”pursuing opportunities to love people like Jesus loves them.”  If you remember me saying this is NOT a part of our vision framework that we will begin to work on first Tuesday in January.  However, we should see and feel this in every part of our vision framework.  Ths is the operating system running in the background of everything we do.  So I would like for you to take some time between now and our next leadership meeting to reflect on this statement.  More specifically I would like for you to post some thoughts on why you think this statement is true about Crosslink.  You may want to give some examples too.  I look forward to seeing your post.

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

The starting point for vision – for thinking about our church’s future – is not deciding where we want to go or exploring what everyone else is doing that works for them. The key is understanding how we are unique.

Why do you think finding our uniqueness is crucial to our vision development? As Will Mancini points out in “Church Unique”, “It is not about worship style or programs offered; it is something more significant yet subtler at the same time. It is something that is often overlooked: a culture that is unique to a particular church.”

Culture is the combined effect of the interacting values, thoughts, attitudes, and actions that define the life of our church.

1) Is it important for us to discover our own DNA? Our a Unique Culture?

2) If yes, why is it important that we discover our own unique culture that only helps define Crosslink?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

What makes you unique?  What sets you apart from anyone else?  Every person has a uniqueness like none other.  Did you know there is no one just like you?  No one has your thumbprint.  No one has the same DNA as you do!  Did you know the same could be said about our church?  There is not another church quite like Crosslink.  There is a uniqueness that we have that is different than any other church.  What do you think that uniqueness would be?  Take some time to answer the question from last week:

What can we do better than 10,000 others?

Then ask what makes us unique? [hint the first question will help you answer this one!]

Look forward to hearing from you.

We recently started our “Vision Pathway” with our leadership team.  It was a great meeting where we discovered the brutal facts.  The brutal fact is we are in somewhat of a “vision vacuum.”  Our church has grown to 350 – 400 in 3 1/2 years and we really grew without a clearly articulated vision.  We learned that within the “vision vaccum”  people are going to find something to hang on to.  We talked about four substitutes of a well-balanced vision.  In the absence of a clear vision people will gravitate towards these four sources of malnourishment:

1)  Place – Where we meet.  Our church building!

2)  Personalities – We are attracted to our pastor, or pastors, or a Life Group leader.

3)  Programs – We love the program we lead.  They can be addicted to the program.

4)  People – It’s the “us four and no more” mindset.  We like our little group of people.

We all agreed that  at Crosslink personality and people were the two sources of a malnourished identity.  Now that we know there is a “vision vaccum” and that we have some sources of malnourished identity there is work to do.  This will be the primary way weekly that we address vision and leadership  as we drill down on our “Vision Pathway.”  I am so excited to be serving with you all, and look forward to what God reveals on the journey.

Here’s what I would like for you to do.  When I post one of these “Vision Moments” I would like for you to respond by posting your comments to this blog.  I will check them and follow up with any questions or comments you may have.  So here is something to chew on and comment back on the post.

What can Crosslink do better than 10,000 others?

When calamity comes where do you turn? Have you ever found yourself on the wrong road heading to nowhere? I am currently in a series entitled “Where Do You Turn?”. We all have emotional distress at some point and time or another. How do we deal with it when it comes? Last week I talked about how we deal with depression. We concluded that you can’t trust your feelings. However, you must choose to act and believe what God says about you in his Word. This week I will address how we respond when anxiety attempts to wreck our lives. You can listen to this series at www.lifeatthelink.org. Last weeks message won’t be available to the first part of next week. Sorry for the delay, but we experienced some technical difficulties.