It gives me a surge of motivation when I get an opportunity to write on my favourite topic “Vision”. I have written many articles on this topic. I trust it was a blessing to those who read the same. I have done a number of seminars related to vision, eg. ‘Understanding the vision’, ‘culminating to finding the vision’, why vision fails? how to keep your vision moving? how to develop a strategy and a roadmap from the vision? and how do I monitor my progress? The people group in my seminars included Pastors, Bible college students, young people and Church members.
Penning my thoughts down about my long association working with Churches (close to 60 denominations and more) in India, I found the Churches that really made significant impact among its congregation and in the community are the ones who were successful in finding what their vision is and able to articulate the same and follow the roadmap ardently. And most importantly these are the people who were able to quantify their progress and able to articulate the success not in terms of the many programs that the church is doing but in terms of measurable impact the Churches have created as the result of the programs and activities. I do come across disagreement, mainly out of convenience, that we don’t need to put this meticulously and follow a management style. What such group fail to understand is that the Bible is full of Strategies (Approaches & Methodologies) and more importantly Bible talks about planning, calculating, finding right counsel and so many other necessary factors that the Bible endorses completely.
We are so close to the coming of the Lord and you will all agree that much has to be done. Mere church activity without creating vibrant discipleship has less lasting impact. It is high time that we concentrate on the lost souls that we witness in our society, schools, colleges, work places, business areas even in Churches. It’s time to stop overfeeding our Church members, but train systematically on the core of discipleship that is found in 2 Timothy 2:2-3 “What you have heard from me, in the presence of many witnesses commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus”. How effective are we in sharing the gospel? One of the problems today is that we are not successful in presenting Jesus in a correct shape. How many of our members know how to share the gospel and what to share?
It is time to take a giant leap towards evangelistic work. Let me again use one of my favourite quote which goes this way, “If you practice the great commission and share about Christ you are an irritant, and if you practice great commandment and talk about the love of Christ, you are interesting, but if you do both great commission and great commandment together, you are irresistible.”. Enough of programs, activities and celebrations. If you follow the book of Amos, you would notice God using some strong words in the book of Amos 5:21-24 “I hate all your show and pretense- the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies…..”. Time to revolutionise things for God.
Just want to leave you with a fact. In India we are still 2.30% though Christianity's presence is seen for 2000 years. Hinduism has reached London only 200 years ago and has achieved significant impact that their current population is 5%. This goes with the world Christian population too. The number of Churches has grown, denominations have increased, fund collection had increased too, but we still are not exactly where we ought to be. Are our statistics indicating something? Ponder over it!
Yes, we are to keep both great commission and commandment. God bless.
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