VISION SUNDAY

It felt good to be back in the saddle at Gateway today, even if after ten weeks of not preaching I was a little rusty. Numbers are a long way from being everything, but it was encouraging to have the largest congregation in attendance since I joined the church – especially as this is the day on which I try to spell out what we are aiming for over the next few months. And what a joy to consider the vast scale of what God is calling his church to from Ephesians 3:8-12…

v8

To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ

It is grace to be able to talk about Jesus! This is a message for all nations, and the very least Christian can help preach it.

What we preach is unsearchable in the sense that it is beyond measure. It is like looking into the skies and trying to count the stars – simply too vast for us to get our minds around. The trouble is that when we think of ‘riches’ we tend to think too narrowly. We imagine riches as owning a Ferrari, or a football club, or buying our dream house, or being able to have an exotic holiday whenever we want. But compared to the riches of Christ, these things are like comparing a street light to the stars.

We mustn’t have a shrink-wrapped Jesus! What we have to preach about him is the most important and precious message in the world.

v9

And to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things

God is working out a plan! This plan has been in planning since the creation of the world.

Planning is good, but our plans inevitably never work out as we plan them to! As Dwight D. Eisenhower put it, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

The difference between our plans and God’s are that not only is God’s plan good, but it is working out perfectly.

God’s plans were secret but have now been made public. In the build up to Overlord in the Second World War (the plan to retake occupied France from the Germans) everyone knew something was happening, but not when or how or where. In a similar way the angels knew God was forming a plan of salvation, but they had no idea of its vastness – that it should reach even so far as to touch someone like me.

v10

So that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

Why is it that God is unveiling his plan? Paul tells it is so he might show his manifold wisdom to the rulers and authorities. To describe God’s wisdom as ‘manifold’ is to say it is like the facets of a diamond, which make the stone shine with a brilliant and unique light. God’s wisdom is brilliant!

Who, then, are the rulers and authorities to whom God is displaying this great wisdom?

The Christian lives in a world of both physical and spiritual reality. We live in a fallen world, which is under the power of the devil, and all around us we see the evidence of his rule. But we are also citizens of the new world – where the victory of Jesus is already assured.

This means our experience in this life is one of both victory and difficulty. We are ‘more than conquerors’ (Romans 8:37) but we also flesh and blood, who still sin, and still get hurt.

The “rulers and authorities” Paul speaks of are those spiritual powers that are still fighting against the inevitable victory that is Christ’s.

So how does God show his wisdom to these powers?

Through the church!

Now this is weird! It is not at all the method that we would choose. We are far too aware of our failings! Surely it would be better to choose something more impressive than the church?

But God’s choosing of the church reflects the upside down rules of the kingdom of God. God chooses the unlikely, the weak, the despised, to make his wisdom known. His wisdom is different from worldly wisdom, and he uses different weapons to win his battles.

The reality is that simply by being the church we are engaged in spiritual warfare. We don’t need to address the spiritual powers; but we do affect them.

v11

This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord

It was always God’s plan to do it this way! It was in order to work out God’s plan that Jesus’ came into the world – there was nothing random about it. All of history was always leading to the cross, and all of history now is an outworking of the cross in the life of the church.

v12

In whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

As members of the church, we have free access to God. We can be bold and confident, the qualities of a good soldier. We need the qualities of good soldiers because we are engaged in battle; and we can be bold and confident in this fight because we are on the winning side!


Application to Gateway
What can we apply from this to our situation at Gateway Church?

Lets plan, but not worry too much if our plans don’t always work as expected! Lets trust God to help us through whatever difficulties we face. Lets see ourselves as members of the bigger plan that cannot fail. Lets worry less about our weakness and wonder more at his grace. Lets live multicoloured, wisdom displaying lives. Lets recognizing the darkness and pain of the world around us but live fully, as new creations in Christ Jesus. Lets commit ourselves to living lives of Adventure, Purity and Compassion. Lets love the cross, and love the church. And lets be bold and confident because of his grace, rather than our performance.


Gateway Goals

On this Sunday last year I set out a number of goals that would act as signposts, helping us to gauge whether or not we are making progress. Today is a good opportunity to review those goals.

1. Small Groups
Relaunching our small groups system is something we have wanted to do for a long time, but it is also something over which we have wanted to take our time. We are finally launching new groups – Life Groups – in October, and I am planning to spend the next five weeks preaching into this.

Launching Life Groups also helps us in one of our other goals of wanting to see more leaders develop, as we need lots of leaders to lead the groups.

2. Youth
It is a year since we put new leaders in charge of our youthwork, and over that time we have seen some significant progress. Our young people were particularly impacted by Newday and we want to build on this by seeing a number of them baptized in the coming weeks.

We have also now moved all our youthwork to Friday evenings.

3. Membership
Over the past year we have put a renewed emphasis on church membership, and so far 79 people have done at least some part of our Finding Your Place course.

4. Prayer
Prayer is an act of spiritual warfare, and over the past year the prayer temperature of the church has risen a few degrees. It can still be much better though! This week we have three evening prayer meetings, and as well as attending these I would encourage you to fast this week as we seek God’s blessing on us.

5. More weddings & babies
We are still low on weddings! Part of the long term strategy to change this is our desire to reach out to students – many of whom will hopefully settle in this area once they graduate, get jobs, marry, and have children.

Over the past year we have seen our student group grow from virtually nothing to 15-20 and today we are setting a new goal to see a group of 30-40 students with us over the next year.

We have done better with seeing more babies born! And this Friday we are launching a new toddlers group – Little Gators – which is an exciting development.

6. More salvation & baptisms
This is still an area in which we need to do better! We have seen a number of people respond to the gospel, but baptism is the point at which I really like to count them.

Between September 2007 and August 2008 we had nine baptisms. In the same period for the last year we had seven. My prayer is that we see the line on this graph going upwards from now on!

7. More training
We have had a large number of church members attending various training courses to deepen their understanding of scripture and theology. This has been great! And we want to see it continue.

8. More money
Pretty much everything we do costs money, and the good news is that we are doing better in this area.

On the previous years giving figures we had predicted a deficit budget for this financial year of £38,000, but so far this year our income is meeting our expenditure. It would be wonderful to get to April next year with a balanced budget!

9. Big news
The big news in 2008 was our change of name from Alder Road Baptist Church to Gateway Church. There is nothing quite so dramatic this year, but our big news is that from January we are planning to go to two morning services.

We are doing this because we want to grow, and we just don’t have the physical space to do that at the moment. It is something we have been discussing as elders for over a year, and it is something that people we respect who have visited us have advised us to do. It has its risks, but we want to trust our plans to God, knowing that his master plan cannot fail.


In all these things we want to act with boldness and confidence over the next 12 months, because of our faith in Jesus!