This post is an excerpt from the journal I keep as part of my field placement internship at Fellowship Community Church. It’s about the importance of casting vision — that is, keying people in on why we do what we do — not only at churches, but also in other organizations. If  you’re not a fan of being or producing mindless worker bees at your organization, you will likely relate to my thought process. Enjoy 🙂

Jesus-is-vision

As the end of the semester approaches, I’m beginning to think about termination of each of the connections I’ve made and projects I’ve started at the church. If I up and left right now, much of my influence will fizzle out within the next year, and much of the precious time I have spent will go to waste.

When I listen to my classmates in my social work seminar, I have to wonder — with all of these people giving up their lives to help others, are we really making any difference? You know, you can do evaluations for stuff like that to produce numbers that prove differences in emotional states and employment status and social acceptance. But how long does it really last? If you help some kid in a poor, abusive family, maybe he feels supported for a while, but how often do we really get these kids to a place where they grow up to be people who don’t drink and fight and abuse their own families?

In my case presentation this week, I told my group that I like working at a church, because we get to help people before they break the law. Before these boys get into drugs, or these girls grow up to be unbalanced workaholic businesswomen, we as a church get to catch them and teach them that drugs, sex, and even success are ultimately not enough to fill the void of emotional and spiritual need. Church practice is very preventative that way. We discuss institutional problems, as well as everyday issues in families. (And God’s ultimate evaluation measure is not frequency of behavior, but attitude of heart.)

In theory, the model of the church should work. But Barna Group says over three-fourths of kids who grow up in church stop going when they graduate. Many of those go on to fall into the same problems everyone else does. The American church, on the whole, has the same divorce rate as the rest of the world (though I’ve been in a church movement that had a miniscule 2% divorce rate — they took dating and relationships pretty seriously.)

Schools prepare you for careers with years of testing, classes, personality testing, counseling, and lectures. You can change careers fairly easily these days. But marriage? According to the Bible, God made it to be a life-long commitment. What do we do to prepare young adults to make one of the most important decision of their lives?

The world says, “Do whatever feels right.” If it’s too hard, or you “fall out of love,” they must not be “the right person.” As if we’re all puzzle pieces doomed to comb through billions of people all our lives for that one “perfect fit” before we can be complete.

I don’t think God meant it to be that way. But the church often treats it the same way as the world. “Don’t have sex before you get married, because that’s wrong. But date whoever you’re led to date.” It’s still feelings-driven.

But I digress.

My point is that, if I as a social worker am in the business of transforming lives, I can’t do a half-ass job. I can’t tell kids “Don’t have sex” without telling them that the purpose of relationships in the first place is to honor God and lay down your own life for your another — not to “feel good.” Or my practice will be inconsistent.

We’re trying to start small groups at the church. But why? Because everyone’s doing it? Because it’s “fun?” Because hearing sermons every week all my life isn’t enough? Because my wife is trying to guilt me into using up my gasoline and whatever energy I have left after work spending time with people who get on my nerves?

Psh. No wonder the church is losing men. I wouldn’t go either.

We need to communicate vision and purpose. If we aren’t doing that, none of this will stick. Or only certain people will come. And others will be at a disadvantage. The lonely extraverts will all come, but the introverts with 60-hour-a-week jobs won’t see the point.

The Bible calls people to be all in or all out. It calls everyone to get off the fence. Jesus literally asks people to “pick up their crosses daily,” meaning they lay down their lives to do whatever God tells them to do. It’s tough, and people have to give up their self-determination in many respects. But it’s what will fulfill them the most.

This “dying to self” thing is the only way I’ve ever seen people overcome sex addictions, drug addictions, or anger problems on more than just a surface level.

The only people who do that are the ones who have a Lord,  another commander over their lives that isn’t “me.” The ones who don’t live for themselves, or even for other people, but for God.

The reason I am writing this all is that, as a social worker, I am a world-changer. I don’t want to change the world by turning people into cattle who follow something blindly.

The people who discover purpose and fulfillment in life are the ones who learn how to think for themselves. The ones who get it. The ones who know why they’re doing what they’re doing. They believe in what they’re doing; they don’t just do it because everyone else is, or because it’s fun for a time.

I want to produce people like that at my church. If they get the vision behind the Bible, and behind what we’re supposed to be as a church, they will be creative. They will have beautiful ideas and they will fight to execute them. They will do what they don’t want to do because they know it will be worth it. If that vision isn’t there, church attendance and involvement will depend solely upon whether the church leaders are good at being entertaining. How exhausting!

So what does it take to cast purpose and vision? Complete surrender to Jesus as Lord. Nothing less.

Otherwise, it’s likely we’ll wake up one day and realize that our efforts, though well-intentioned, are missing the whole point.

The website I’m making will be eye candy for a while. But then its influence will be trumped by websites that provide, well, more “appeal.”  The Asperger’s discussion I conducted will be just another youth activity come and gone. My small group will fizzle out and everyone will be lonely again and left to fight their sin and doubts by themselves. Including yours truly.

Vision isn’t the only thing we need for longevity. We need money, time, bodies, innovation, training, education, resources. But what we really need is the Person of Jesus Christ, and an intimate connection with Him. Each and every one of us. 

Vision doesn’t come from leaders. It comes from God. Our purposes are whatever God tells us to do. being in tune with that vision requires a dynamic, conflict-laden, blatantly honest relationship with Jesus. If we have that kind of connection to Jesus, and what He was really about, it will change the world.

And it has.

So as I’m terminating this internship, I’m trying to think about how to communicate this vision. And by vision, I mean the reason behind the activity. And like that hymn says, Jesus is the vision. And those cheesy slogans at Christmas are right: Jesus is the reason. The only reason I’ve stuck around in this war zone called ministry is that Jesus, who owns the universe, and quite frankly, my soul, tells me to. Because I believe that, if I’m convinced that God wants me to do something, He can get me to do anything.

(For the record, it truly is a blessing to be in ministry. I have enjoyed every single person I’ve had the honor of working with this semester as I follow God’s vision and strive to make it a reality. But it’s not easy to persevere. It really is a battle to fight against forces that create dissension and disunity.)

But how to communicate this? A relationship is really not so much something that is communicated as something that is experienced. So I guess we imitate it, and we advertize it. I’ve seen people try to communicate it through Bible references, through helping people establish habits of reading that Bible thing daily, and talking to the Guy who wrote it, and even singing songs about what it says. It requires memory and frequency and intention, that’s for sure. It requires meeting together, imitating Jesus in speech and conduct and attitude and habits, imitating the way He built up the church (aka his disciples). And those all require surrender.

How can I leave a legacy? How can I leave people with this vision? This idea that this is a commitment of one’s whole life, not just one’s whole Sunday morning? How can I convince people that to call yourself a Christian means to die? I honestly don’t completely know. Because it doesn’t always click with people. Especially suburban American people who don’t know what it means to sleep, much less die.

As I build the website, I plan to tap into that vision, communicating that we’re not just a fun social club, but that we are a group of people who exist to please God. As I either finish or continue with my small group, I want to communicate to everyone that to call yourself a Christian is to proclaim in every aspect of one’s life that “This is NOT about me.” As we celebrate the seniors graduating from high school, I want to do my part in showing them that the crew they travel with in college will change their lives forever, so they better choose it intentionally.

Yes, I want to celebrate what I’ve learned, but I’m not the kind of person who is naïve enough to believe that what I have done here is enough. There is no logical foundation for me to believe that, as the American Dream claims, just because I did my best, my work will pay off and save people from poverty and addiction and perversions and affairs and eternal separation from their Soulmate, Jesus.

And yet, even at 20, I’m old enough to know that I’ll never be able to do enough (glad I understand that now, before I’ve burnt myself out for 50 years trying to empty a sinking boat with my Dixie cup).

So I make this my goal: To trust that God will do what He will do with this measly little life to contribute to His plan to save the world. If there’s anyone who can make a lasting impact, it’s a Guy who lives forever. That’s why Jesus is the ultimate social worker.

And that’s why I’ll keep working for Him after my internship, even though I won’t complete this thing anywhere near perfectly.