Vintage21 Church

Sharon Butler · Joined: 09 Feb 2008 Posts: 25

vision casting is a phrase in the "year of health" that has been mentioned multiple times by various leaders in vintage. before that, it may have been been mentioned in connection with our new location in downtown (but i honestly cannot recall if that's where i first heard it or not).

i am a bit curious to understand more about vintage's stance on this topic. the 2008 year of health threads define it as follows:

Pastor Nate · Joined: 25 Jan 2008 Posts: 18 Location: Raleigh, NC

Sharon,

That’s a great question and I’m glad to help give some clarification. Hopefully it helps further define what our hope is as it applies to the year of health.

The vision is what helps give purpose; it’s the drive behind any movement. Vision, whether we like it or not becomes a focal point, and filtering tool for any organization. I’ll attempt to unpack that below.

For the most part, businesses or organizations as you’ve identified them, their “Vision” is to make money. It’s their bottom line. The CEO and all of the employees/members of that business are there to build/protect and make sure that vision comes to fruition. Without the “Vision”, they have no purpose to go to work each day and put in the hours. Any great businessman will tell you that you have to constantly put the “purpose” before those involved. But what they won’t tell you is that there is only “one way” to make money. What they will do is use the Vision as the filter through which all possible ways to make money go through. They want to make sure they’re being the most effective and that everything they do is the most effective at reaching their VISION.

In the church, functionally it isn’t much different. Our Vision guides and governs the way in which we conduct ourselves. However, spiritually the beautiful thing about the church is that our Vision is connected to the Gospel. Unashamedly, it drives everything about us. Where a business is “set up” with many parts to make money, a church is set-up with many parts to accomplish the Vision.

A business will ask of its parts, “does this part help us accomplish our Vision or is there something more effective?” The Church should do the same thing, does this “part” help us honor Jesus and accomplish the vision he’s called us to, or is there something more effective?

We want to make sure we “Vision Cast” so everyone knows where the church is heading and so that everyone has the same filter to view the areas they participate in. Which is how it applies to subsequent areas of Vintage. To use your example, we want home-groups and home-group leaders (parts of the church) to know the Vision of the Church by heart so that anything that doesn’t help accomplish the Vision, will be seen quickly and either changed, made better or removed.

We will always try to be biblically faithful as the Vision can only be accomplished there, but the methodology we use can always change to be more effective. If you know, live and want to build the vision, you’ll be prepared to make any necessary changes to the way that things are done.

So to answer your question about how we decided to make this a part of the year of health. The vision of the church is foundational. It is tertiary. If we don’t know the vision of the church, we have nothing to work towards. Just to say we know Jesus isn’t enough. With Jesus comes a mission, a vision. It was our sense that though we’ve grown as a church, there are still many disconnects to the folks at Vintage to help accomplish the vision, so, we thought we should talk about it some more.

If this didn’t help, let me know, and I’ll go at it another way.

Sharon Butler · Joined: 09 Feb 2008 Posts: 25

thanks for the response. i think your response makes it clearer what the idea is behind "vision casting". i believe my confusion comes in how that concept is applied. here are more of my general thoughts below:

Sharon Butler · Joined: 09 Feb 2008 Posts: 25

just bumping to see if anybody else wanted to weigh in on the additional questions. thanks.
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well-behaved women rarely make history.

Sharon Butler · Joined: 09 Feb 2008 Posts: 25

so, i guess i'm alone in wondering about this particular item & i'll have to wrestle with that on my own. but i'd love to hear thoughts if people have them.
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well-behaved women rarely make history.

Pastor Tyler · Joined: 08 Feb 2008 Posts: 85 Location: Downtown Raleigh

Sharon...if you would like to meet with one of the pastors about this, please let us know.
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Pastor Tyler

Sharon Butler · Joined: 09 Feb 2008 Posts: 25

thanks, tyler. i appreciate that.
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well-behaved women rarely make history.

bredelings · Joined: 18 Mar 2008 Posts: 21 Location: Raleigh

Rob Davis · Joined: 23 Jan 2008 Posts: 89 Location: Raleigh, NC

Rob Davis · Joined: 23 Jan 2008 Posts: 89 Location: Raleigh, NC

Here's an MP3 of Chris Wright talking about the connection between the missional nature of the Bible, and the biblical mandate for mission:
http://www.mpc.org.au/resources/2004/20040403.mp3
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http://v21missionality.wordpress.com

Eric Butler · Joined: 09 Feb 2008 Posts: 52

I tend to agree with what you are saying, Rob, but it seems to point back to a problem I've noticed a lot recently: terms that lack precise definition. I've heard "missional" in the context of "make converts" again and again. "Missional" in the sense of "make disciples of all nations and see the redemption of all things" is a rather different concept, even if it shares some common threads. I'm completely on board with holding up missionality if it refers to the second concept, but the first one seems to be the shallow end of the theological pool.

Rob Davis · Joined: 23 Jan 2008 Posts: 89 Location: Raleigh, NC

bredelings · Joined: 18 Mar 2008 Posts: 21 Location: Raleigh

Hi Rob,

Thanks for your reply. I think I misread it at first as taking me to task for having the temerity to question the great and obvious importance of mission. But, on rereading, it now looks more like you are saying that the common distorted senses of the idea of mission may come from focussing entirely on New Testament passages, and on a small number of passages such as the "Great Commision". In that context, I completely agree about the great importance of understanding what the church's mission really is by looking at the secret plan of God.

However, I think that there is still another question about whether all of scripture can really be summarized as "The Mission of God". Therefore, I am intrigued by the mission-based approach to Scripture that Chris Wright uses. I really like the idea of paying attention to the narrative of scripture including (of course) the Old Testament. I actually have read Chris Wright's article in Christianity Today a few times before, and I thought that he made some great points. I will listen to the MP3 when I get the chance.

My concern is with taking something as amazing and important as the narrative of the whole of scripture, and trying to summarize it in the single word "mission". This word might be right. But there are some dangers in this: (1) Even if we attempt to redefine "mission" to refer to "whatever the whole narrative of Scripture actually points to", the word itself still has a previous meaning and connotations that it wants to bring in. What are these connotations? They may end up altering the way we read scripture - so that we read it through a "mission-colored" lens. (2) If we try to squeeze the whole of scripture into this interpretive framework, then do we end up flattening the narrative and overlooking parts of scripture that don't fit our box?

I think I would even agree that "the whole of Scripture is about mission". What seems less clear to me (since I don't want to jump the gun on this) is that there isn't anything else you could say this about. For example, you could probably say "the whole of Scripture is about X" for a number of different X's, and each of these might help you to see a different facet of Scripture. Eric Butler suggested that you could try this for a number of different plausible X's, and see how they flow. For example, "love":
"The whole of Scripture is about love"
Here, as we apply the word "love" to God's redemptive activity in his creation, we find the word "love" changed to fit God. But, note that even if we are using "mission" and "love" to describe the same thing, each word still brings in different connotations.

I am also a bit leery of attempts to substitute the X for the actual narrative. Presumably Chris Wright does not do this, but it is very easy to say "Now that we have decided that the entire narrative is about mission, we don't need the narrative any more." And this I cannot do!

Eric Butler · Joined: 09 Feb 2008 Posts: 52

I've been thinking about this list more, and I came up with a tentative "the Bible is about":

1) Mission
2) The victory of God
3) Redemption
4) Love
5) Covenant

I think these illustrate the different forms of categories. Mission and victory are large vague concepts - "The Bible is about how God wins through redemption" demonstrates that smaller concepts can be fit inside these larger ones.

What's more, covenant is much more simple intellectual assent than love or redemption. It operates more on a "you should know" basis than a "change your life to align with" basis.

So I think the real question (since I'm not arguing that we shouldn't use these terms, merely that we should think actively and publicly about them) is what we bring in on the tails of these terms.

Mission certainly brings in concepts of doing. Mission is something you do - and that's valuable for a people whose concept of gospel may extend into doing only so far as attending Sunday services and signing checks to charity. On the other hand, it may also carry baggage we must be aware of.

My preferred term, victory, certainly does. The baggage is stupid machismo. The victory of God should not, in any way, be construed to advocate testosterone-driven stupidity, but martial language can never entirely escape that.

Rob Davis · Joined: 23 Jan 2008 Posts: 89 Location: Raleigh, NC