For nearly a decade FOPC has focused significant energy on finding a new denominational home. That journey culminated in our exodus from the Presbyterian Church (USA) into the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Here we can proclaim the Bible as God’s fully inspired and authoritative word and Jesus Christ as the incarnate Son of God and only Savior of the world.
We know where we have come from. Where is God leading us now? We believe God has an exciting future for us. What does the future look like?
A recent survey of American pastors reports their top need is getting clarity about their church’s vision and mission. As FOPC prepares to launch into God’s future, that’s our challenge too.
Ten years from now…
- What do we want our congregation to look like?
- What will people be saying about our church, our spiritual vitality, our core values, our contribution to the mission of Jesus Christ?
Our session appointed a Vision and Strategy Team to develop a vision statement for our church that captures both who we are now and the church God is calling us to become. It’s a picture of us, present and future.
This is what we came up with.
Fair Oaks Pres
a joy-filled family of Christ followers:
Christ centered
Spirit empowered
Biblically based
Prayer driven
Putting God’s amazing love into action
Sharing Jesus’ transforming message of Life and Hope!
It’s a “work in progress.” Now we need your help. We want our congregation’s input and feedback so that all of us catch this vision and own it. Grab a pen, mark it up, edit, rewrite, change it around.
If you like something, say so.
If you don’t like something, suggest a better wording.
- Drop them off in the VISION boxes in the Caffé, Worship Center, and church office.
- Come to our Sunday brainstorming sessions between services in the Family Life Center. (Facilitated by members of our Vision and Strategy Team.)
- Join the churchwide conversation by posting your rewrites and comments
Love the Vision Statement -- I think it is memorable -- "a joy-filled family of Christ followers . . .” and it is short and simple enough to be memorized.
ReplyDeleteI have one suggestion -- "biblically" STOOD OUT for me as an adjective while the others are nouns. I feel using the adjective conveys that the bible is less important than the others or is being soft peddled for some reason. Use the noun "Bible" -- to my mind it makes the entire list stronger. Also it is consistent with the list of values. "Bible Based" is better.
Christ Centered, Spirit Empowered, Bible Based, Prayer Driven
Wishing many blessings and His inspiration to the Task Force,
Art Sponseller
I completely agree with the first point we need to be Jesus-centered as a church and by that I mean that in every aspect of our church we should be displaying and living out the gospel. The gospel that Jesus lived a perfectly righteous life, died on the cross for our sins, when we accept him as our savior his righteousness becomes our righteousness, and that Jesus rose from the dead overcoming sin, death and hell. Jesus not only did this to save us and give us eternal life but to transform our lives. Tim Keller states, “Believing the gospel is not only the way to meet God, but also the way to grow into him.” (http://extendingthekingdom.org/?page_id=17)
ReplyDeleteFrom the presentation of the FOPC Vision at yesterday’s service it seemed clear that this is not a radical shift in FOPC’s foundation but merely a way to express what the church thinks is currently happening at FOPC, with the addition of a focus on “family”. However, I am not entirely convinced that these items listed in the vision statement are already occurring at FOPC and there needs to be a 180 degree turn in the direction that the church is headed. Unfortunately, over the past few years the gospel foundation of our church has gone away and as a church we no longer think that we need the gospel. The theology that is being portrayed is this, “The gospel is for new believers but not for those who are mature in their faith.” Being a gospel-centered church does not mean that we include an altar call at the end of every sermon message but it means that all the sermons are all about Jesus, whether the sermon is on a passage in the book of Ruth or the book of John or any book of the Bible. The gospel should not only be present in the sermons that are preached on Sunday but in every aspect of the church from Children’s Ministry to Mariners to ACTS and all the ministries and events that FOPC orchestrates and participates in.
My wife and I are leaving FOPC and it saddens us greatly to leave those people that we have been in community with over the past six years. We are leaving because we do not see any indication of change at FOPC towards being more Jesus-centered. We have seen an unwillingness to make dramatic changes at the church to restore it back to Jesus, through our participation on various commissions. The restoration of this church needs to happen by not looking at the past growth that we had in the 80s and 90s but by looking towards the future. Creating a healthy and vital church in the town of Fair Oaks can only occur when it is based solely on the gospel and that should be FOPC’s future. However, at this point this does not seem like this is the direction that FOPC is headed in. Unless there is a radical change to gospel-centrality in every aspect of the church from the leadership down to individual ministries, FOPC is headed towards a very quick death. We have spoken with many people at the church cross-generationally and the general consensus among those people we have spoken with is that as a church we have lost our first love, like the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2:1-7. Jesus is everything and he is all, let’s go back to him. FOPC needs to have a vision and focus that is the whole gospel to the whole person to the whole world, in order for it to thrive and passionately pursue Jesus in a fallen world.
We care so much about the people at this church that we have worked diligently in trying to help reform it over the past few years, however, there has been no indication from church leadership that they want to make foundational changes. Instead of conducting life-saving surgery on the heart of the church, they are applying bandaids. We are leaving FOPC not because we are giving up on the church or the people who go to FOPC but because we will not stand by a church that does not have Jesus as its foundation. In order for this vision statement to be worth something, FOPC actually needs to create a church that is actually based on Jesus and not present the congregation with mere words that have no “fruit” behind them.
I would say to leave the "Christ-centered, Spirit-Empowered, Bible-based, Prayer-Driven" to the Core values as they add too much to the Vision Statement if it is to be easily remembered by the congregation.
ReplyDeleteHere is a suggestion for the vision:
"We see FOPC as a joy-filled family which comes to the gospel regularly, grows in the gospel steadily, and, goes out with the gospel purposefully."
-Jonathan Neuenschwander
I want to publicly apologize for the harshness of my tone and the place I chose to voice my concerns about FOPC.
ReplyDelete