Shawn Lovejoy is the founding and Lead Pastor at Mountain Lake Church in Cumming, GA. In six years his Mountain Lake has grown from 4 people to over 2,000. Shawn spoke this afternoon on leveraging vision in your new church plant. He focused specifically on the church planter as a prophet and how the prophet receives vision, communicates vision and implements vision.
Another good session that brought my attention back around to the need to re-focus on the vision of Bridge Church, specifically on the communication and protection of the vision.
Leveraging Vision
Amos 3:7, God has chosen to use prophets.
Church planters are prophets when it comes to vision. It is one of our roles, to receive the vision, to communicate the vision, and to implement the vision.
Most new church plants that are 2-5 years old will have drifted from their original vision and the planter, who is now the pastor will start to look elsewhere. The ship will be too hard to turn around.
The vision you communicate is not about you, but about God.
How do we get there? What does it look like to be a church planting prophet?
* Prophets Get The Vision
It takes time, hard work and discipline for vision.
* Prophets Communicate The Vision
“thus saith the Lord”
Communication comes from the Pastor, small group leaders, worship leader, and announcements. Make announcements clear to communicate vision.
Flow is not the mission of your church, God is.
* God’s vision to a prophet always comes under attack.
Prophets must protect the vision. We must courageously protect the vision – “be mean about the vision.” Do not let people hijack the vision. Problems do not go away, you must attack the problem and confront people.
Our problem is we have consumer Christians who are only into Christianity for what they can get out of it – “feed me, make me feel good, etc…”
* Say NO to people, or you will be overextended. Say no to the good stuff and say yes to the Best Stuff.
Prophets didn’t care what people thought, only what God thought – Galatians 1:10.