Fairly regularly I meet new couples visiting our church and they pose a very serious question: What is the vision of Vineyard? I sort of wiggle in my seat, sweat beads form in my pits, and I launch into what I can only describe as an elevator pitch. A sales job. Motivational meanderings.

Historically it has sounded something like this: We love the bible and worship and the poor, but we like the rich too. You know, everybody!  Oh, you like flags during worship? Yeah, well, we could do flags . . . I guess. You love responsive reading too? Ok, yeah, we wave flags and recite the Nicene Creed at the same time. Our vision is for the city and for the nations and for our neighbor and deep pastoral care and we focus all our time on social justice. Of course, we’ll also spend our best energy on shepherding the needs of the broken, cause you know, Jesus did that. And we pray for the sick and cast out demons and we want to make sure people are eating together. A lot! We don’t really care about buildings, except we do, kind of. We are laser focused on serving but we spend a huge amount of time on being level 10 leaders. Our vision is to be a church for unchurched people but we also have a vision for taking people into the depths of maturity. This is our vision. This is what sets us apart from everyone else!

Blah, blah, blah. My well-rehearsed speech makes me feel cheap.

Interestingly, the idea of a vision or a vision statement in the church world is relatively new. Like in the last 50 years new. In fact, Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback in Orange County and author of the Purpose Drive Church and Purpose Driven Life, was one of the first evangelicals to give us language for a vision statement. He shouted from his mega-complex “Without a vision, the people (and churches) will perish” (Proverbs 29:18). And we drank it in. Churches printed up their trifold brochures with full color pictures and were convinced the silver bullet of gospel ministry had been found.

We were inspired!

Not really though.

LOOKING BACK

As it turns out, in the first 1900 years of the church’s existence, leaders never had to create vision statements because the church already had one. There was no need to set each church apart from other churches, cause you know, the church was supposed to be unified. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. (Ephesians 4:5-6). Sound familiar?

In fact, for the bulk of history, the church was focused on three things: Christian education (teaching what it means to follow Jesus), Community (living and doing life together), and Evangelism (helping people come into relationship with Jesus). That’s it. Super unsexy.

Even more startling, the ancient church was messy and being part of it came at a great cost. It wasn’t uncommon for a person to go through three years of catechism before he was allowed to be baptized. Nowadays, if someone sheds a tear at the altar we push him or her into the waters. We’re so eager to appear successful and to be visioneers that we have lost what it means to be the church.

So I say we stoke the fires and toss our neatly crafted vision statements into the flames. I find it freeing to tell people, Vision? Ummmm, why don’t you just come and see. Hang out with us for a while.

I’m becoming increasingly more comfortable with the reality that Christian community takes work and time and grace. It should be normative for gospel gatherings to be a little uncomfortable for a newcomer. The church needs to be radically welcoming, but shouldn’t be a place that is easy. The church should be a place that is true.