Vision and Mission
- David Fairchild
- Jan 8, 2006
- Series: Topical 2006
Charting Our Course for 2006
Meaning-Mission-Motivation-Message
Kaleo exists to
delight in God above all else, to exalt His name among all people, for His
glory through Jesus Christ
INTRODUCTION
One of
the great privileges of planting a church is that if you are really committed
to God’s glory and desire it more than life itself, you get an opportunity to see
your greatest longings in your personal life join in harmony with your
vocation.
Last
year, Drew and I struggled with the wording of our vision/mission statement
because we didn’t want it to simply be a catchy little statement we could put
on our website and business card. We
wanted this statement to clearly and concisely capture what it is that we
believed we would give our lives for, and, if necessary, die for.
It was no
small matter for us because we knew that in choosing a statement such as the
one we chose, we were obligating ourselves to living this all the days of our lives
as an example to those we call to join us in this great mission.
Our
personal lives and our ministry lives can not be in different
compartments. Our entire life is
ministry and it is all personal as well as communal.
As we
look forward to what God has for us in 2006, it’s important that we take the
time to speak about this vision and mission of Kaleo. The greatest joy that Drew and I could
experience would be to see a joining of arms to this mission as you begin to
understand and apply this vision to your own lives.
MESSAGE
We’ve
broken our vision statement down into four parts: meaning, mission, motivation,
and message. I pray this helps you to
understand why we do what we do and how we’re attempting to go out into this
world and gather others to this mission.
I. Meaning
Kaleo
exists to delight in GOD above all else-
Before we
go any further, we must understand one thing clearly—God is the goal of
the Gospel. He is our greatest good, He desires to be our
greatest treasure and delight in our lives. He simply is the only One
that will ever truly satisfy a heart that is
weary.
This is
why our affections and emotions matter: because what we take most pleasure in
becomes our treasure. What we treasure
most, gives us our greatest pleasure. It’s that simple. Our pleasure is
the measure of our treasure. It sounds
corny, but it’s true.
I really
don’t believe there is anything more urgent for our church than to consider
where our emotions and affections are placed.
This is
why we chose to use the word “delight” in this opening statement of who we are
as a church and who we want to become.
When we
consider our existence which is owing to God, and we think of a purpose for our
existence, my prayer is that what leads us and guides us in our life together
is a delight in God.
If you
look up the word in the dictionary, the definition is brief, but I think it
sums it up well. Delight is: n 1: a
feeling of extreme pleasure or satisfaction.
Words
like happiness, pleasure, contentment, satisfaction, desire, longing,
thirsting, passion, and many others may carry different connotations for you
and I, but the Bible doesn’t divide its emotional language that way.
Psalms 42:1 “As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for
You, O God.”
Psalms 63:1-3 “O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul
thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, In a dry and weary land where there
is no water. 2 Thus I have seen You in
the sanctuary, To see Your power and Your glory. 3 Because Your lovingkindness is better than
life, My lips will praise You.”
Psalms 73:25-26 “Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing
on earth. 26 My flesh and my heart may
fail, But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
We also
read these writers expressing their delight in God:
Psalms 43:4 “Then I will go to the altar of God, To God my exceeding joy; And
upon the lyre I shall praise You, O God, my God.”
Psalms 37:4 “Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires
of your heart.”
Philippians 4:4 “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!”
This is
the most important pursuit in our life in which we are called to place our
energies individually and corporately: to delight in God above all else.
This
alone will be the litmus test to determine our health as a church: Do we enjoy
God? Are we satisfied with Jesus? Do our
emotions, our affections, and our passions find their greatest fulfillment in
God?
We will
always treasure what we find our greatest pleasure in. If it is money, then money is our
treasure. If it is power, then power is
our treasure. If it is sex, then sex is
our treasure.
What we
find greatest pleasure in will always be our greatest treasure. If Jesus is our greatest source of pleasure,
then treasuring Him will not be a burdensome task, but a natural, emotional
act.
We are
created as a people to delight in something greater than ourselves. We
are made to make much of someone. We are hardwired to be worshippers.
Can we
say with confidence, “I exist to
delight in God above all else”?
That is
how you glorify God—by making much of Him. The way we make much of Him is by being satisfied, loving, cherishing,
treasuring, desiring, and delighting in Him over everything this world and all
its goods have to offer.
Jonathan
Edwards puts it like this:
The redeemed have all their objective good in God. God Himself is the great good which they are
brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all
that good which Christ purchased. God is
the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and treasure, their food,
their life, their dwelling place, their ornament and diadem, and their everlasting
honor and glory. They have none in
heaven but God; he is the great good which the redeemed are received to at
death, and which they are to rise to at the end of the world. The Lord God, he is the light of the heavenly
My
conviction is that the better you know Christ, the more sacred and satisfying
and Christ-exalting your life will be. This will ultimately produce a life that has meaning and purpose.
The
majesty of Christ is like the sun at the center of the solar system of you
life. The massive sun, 333,000 times the
mass of the earth, holds all the planets in orbit. So it is with the supremacy of Christ in our
lives. All the planets of our
life-meaning, desires, commitments and beliefs, our aspirations and dreams, our
attitudes and convictions, our habits and disciplines, our solitude and
relationships, our labor and rest, our thinking and our feeling—all the planets
of our lives are held in orbit by the greatness and gravity and blazing
brightness of the supremacy of Jesus Christ at the center of our life.
If He
ceases to be the bright, blazing, satisfying beauty at the center of your life,
the planets will fly into confusion and a hundred different things will be out
of control until they crash into one another.
We were
made to know Christ. We were made to see
Him and savor Him with everlasting satisfaction.
That
Christ would come to us even now and by His Spirit and through His Word reveal
to us:
- The supremacy of his deity, equal with God the Father
in all his attributes— the radiance of his glory and the exact imprint of
his nature, infinite, boundless in all his excellencies;
- The supremacy of his eternality that makes the mind of
man explode with the unsearchable thought that Christ never had a
beginning, but simply always was; sheer, absolute reality while all the
universe is fragile, and dependent upon outside force for existence,
Christ is not in His ever-existing substance;
- The supremacy of his never
changing constancy in all His
virtues and all His character and all His commitments—He is the same
yesterday, today, and forever;
- The supremacy of His knowledge that makes the Library
of Congress look like a matchbox, and all the information on the internet
look like a farmers almanac, and quantum physics—and everything the greatest
of minds have ever dreamed—seem like first-grade thought;
- The supremacy of His wisdom that has never been
perplexed by any complication and can never be counseled by the wisest of
men;
- The supremacy of His authority over heaven and earth
and hell—without whose permission no man and no demon can move one inch;
who changes times and season, removes kings and sets up kings; who does
according to His will among the host of heavens and among the inhabitance
of the earth, so that none can stay His hand or say to Him, “What have you
done?”
- The supremacy of His providence, without which not a
single bird falls to the ground in the furthest reaches of the Amazon, or
a single hair of any head turns black or white;
- The supremacy of His word, that moment by moment
upholds the universe and holds in being all the molecules and atoms and
subatomic world we have never yet dreamed of;
- The supremacy of His power to walk on water, cleanse
lepers and heal the lame, open the eyes of the blind, cause the deaf to
hear and storms to cease and the dead to rise, with a single word or
thought;
- The supremacy of His purity never to sin or to have one
millisecond of an evil or lustful thought;
- The supremacy of His trustworthiness never to break His
word or let one promise fall to the ground;
- The supremacy of His justice to render in due time all
moral accounts in the universe settled either on the cross or in hell;
- The supremacy of His patience to endure our dullness
for decade after decade and to hold back his final judgment on this land
and on the world, that many might repent and come to Him;
- The supremacy of His meekness and lowliness that He humbled Himself and embraced the pain of the
cross willingly;
- The supremacy of His wrath that will one day explode
against this world with such fierceness that people will call out for the
rocks and the mountains to crush them rather than face the wrath of the
lamb and the radiance of His glory;
- The supremacy of His grace that gives live to the
spiritually dead and wakens faith in haters of God, and justifies the
ungodly with His own righteousness;
- The supremacy of His love that willingly dies for us
even while we were sinners and frees us for the ever-increasing joy in
making much of Him forever;
- The supremacy of his own
inexhaustible gladness in the fellowship of the
Trinity, the infinite power and energy that gave rise to all the universe
and will one day be the inheritance of every struggling saint.
He is
supreme in every admirable and conceivable way:
- Over galaxies and endless
reaches of space;
- Over the earth from the top
of Mount Everest 29,000 feet up, to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean,
36,000 feet down;
- Over all plants and animals,
from the peaceful Blue Whale to the microscopic killer viruses;
- Over all weather and
movements of the earth: hurricanes, tornadoes, monsoons, earthquakes,
avalanches, volcanoes, floods, snow, and rain;
- Over all chemical processes
that heal and destroy: cancer, AIDS, malaria, flu, and all the workings of
antibiotics;
- He is supreme over all
countries and governments and over all armies;
- Over Al Qaeda, and all
terrorists and kidnappings and suicide bombings and beheadings;
- Over Bin Laden and
Al-Zarqawi;
- Over all nuclear threats from
- Over all politics and
elections;
- Over all media, news,
entertainment, sports and leisure;
- Over all education,
universities, scholarship, science and research;
- And over all business,
finance, industry, manufacturing and transportation;
As
Abraham Kuyper used to say, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of
our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry,
‘Mine!”
I pray
that almighty God would help us see and savor, desire and delight, in God and
in Christ’s supremacy.
This kind
of awesome and radical delight in God, this all consuming savoring of Christ,
this answer to the question of our meaning and purpose, will always produce a
heart for missions.
II. Mission
Our
Missions
are not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exist
because Worship does not. Worship is
ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man. When this age is over, and the countless
millions of the redeemed saints fall on their faces before the throne of God,
missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship will abide forever.
Worship
is the fuel and goal of missions. It’s
the goal of missions because in our mission, we desire to bring the nations to
a white-hot enjoyment of God’s glory. The goal of missions is the gladness and delight of all peoples in the
greatness of God.
Missions
begin and end in worship. Where passions
for God are weak, zeal for missions will be weak. Churches and individuals that are not
centered on the exaltation of the majesty and beauty of God will hardly have a
desire to “declare his glory among the nations” (Psalm 96:3).
When we
think of our mission as a church, we should have a focus upon the glory of God,
for the sake of His name and His fame among all people.
We often
view missions as something we write a check for and send overseas to some
remote part of the world. Though that is
true, it is only partially true. If you
are a Christian, that is, if you are a follower and disciple of Christ Himself,
to follow Christ would mean seeking to see others saved that are lost both
internationally and nationally, including our next-door neighbors.
Our
desire for God’s fame throughout the land should be compelling because we see
God’s glory, our delight in Him and His commitment to His own name. Since we
desire to pursue the heart of God, and since God’s heart is committed to His
own glory and fame, we are compelled to tell others about the goodness of our
God.
Dozens of
times Scripture says that God does things “for His name’s sake.” God
delights in having His name known. The first and most important prayer
is,
“Hallowed be thy name.” This is a
request to God that He would work to cause people to hallow His name.
God loves to have more and more people
“hallow” His name, and so His son teaches Christians to put their
prayers in
line with this great passion of the Father. His desire is that people
would esteem, admire, respect, cherish, honor,
and praise His name. It’s a missionary
prayer.
2 Samuel 7:23 “And who is like your people Israel, the one nation on earth whom
God went to redeem to be his people, making himself a name and doing for them
great and awesome things by driving out before your people, whom you redeemed
for yourself from Egypt, a nation and its gods?”
Isaiah 63:12-14 “who caused his glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses,
who divided the waters before them to make for himself an everlasting
name, 13 who led them through the
depths? Like a horse in the desert, they did not stumble. 14 Like livestock that go down into the
valley, the Spirit of the LORD gave them rest. So you led your people, to make
for yourself a glorious name.”
Psalms 106:7-8 “Our fathers, when they were in
Isaiah 48:9-11 "For my name's sake I defer my anger, for the sake of my
praise I restrain it for you, that I may not cut you off. 10 Behold, I have refined you, but not as
silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. 11 For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.”
We should cry out as Isaiah the prophet:
Isaiah 26:8 “Indeed, while following the
way of Your judgments, O LORD, We have waited for You eagerly; Your
name, even Your memory, is the desire of our souls.”
God’s zeal for His fame bursts forth in the Bible again and
again. He wants His fame to be spread to
all peoples of the world that have not yet known Him.
What is our motivation for all this? We think of our meaning or purpose, which is to
delight in God above all else, we consider our mission, which is to exalt his
name among all people. Now we consider
our motivation for this: God’s glory!
III. Motivation
For His
Glory-
All that
God has done in creation is for His glory. His glory and our joy are not at odds.
The Gospel
is not the good news that God makes much of me; it is “the gospel of the glory
of Christ.” God forgives our sin so we can make much of Him. Creation, The Tower of Babel, The call of
Abram, The Exodus, The Giving of the Law, The Wilderness Wanderings, The
Conquest of Canaan, The Beginnings of Monarchy, The Temple of God, Deliverance
in the Time of Kings, Exile and Promised Restoration, Post-Exile Prophets,
Jesus’ Life and Ministry, Jesus’ Death, The Christian
Life, The Second Coming and Final Judgment—each of these major events in
redemptive history act as signposts to remind us that every thing that God does
is for His glory. Whether it is blessings for His glory in promised salvation,
or it is discipline from God for not glorifying Him, each shows us that God is
God-centered and God does all to the praise of His name for His own glory.
God is
thoroughly committed to His own glory. If we are to be at the heart, and know the heart and the will of God, we
will want to glorify Him because that is what is central in His desires and
delight.
How do we
glorify Him? Through delighting in Him
above else. This is why we say, “God is
most glorified when man is most satisfied in Him.”
God’s
passion for His own glory and His passion for my delight in Him are not at
odds. According to Isaiah 43:7, God
created us for His glory.
Our
motivation for all we do—for worship, for missions, for living obediently
according to His word—is all for His glory. And we honor and glorify Him when we delight in Him above everything
else that exists.
But our
message isn’t vague or nebulous. It
isn’t a simple “be happy” or find some joy somewhere. We don’t evangelize for duty, but for His
glory and His fame. We aren’t motivated
by legalism, but the greatest goal of creation: “His glory” through our
joy. And all of this comes through the
message we preach, which is Jesus Christ Himself.
IV. Message
Through Jesus Christ
2 Corinthians 4:4 “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the
unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of
Christ, who is the image of God.”
We preach the Gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of
God.
As Augustine’s famous prayer teaches: “You made us for yourself
and our hearts find no peace till they rest in you.”
Our task in our message is not to communicate or persuade people
that the Gospel was made for their felt needs, but that they were made for the
soul-satisfying glory of God in the Gospel.
As Paul said, “we preach Christ crucified.” (1 Corinthians 1:23).
Acts
1 Timothy 2:5 “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and
men, the man Christ Jesus”
John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.’”
Romans 3:22-24 “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for
all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”
Romans 5:1 “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace
with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Galatians 2:16 “yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law
but through
faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in
order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because
by works of the law no one will be justified.”
Ephesians 1:4-7 “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption through
Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with
which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our
trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”
Philippians
Jude 1:24-25 “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present
you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through
Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority,
before all time and now and forever. Amen.”
We preach a message that salvation is only through Jesus. The only way to satisfy and please God is
through His son. The only sacrifice that
is acceptable to God is that of His perfect Son. The only way to the Father is through the
Son. The only way we can know and
delight in God is through the Son. The
only way we can love God is through the Son. The only way our sin of falling short of the glory of God is forgiven is
through the glory of Christ who removes our sin so that we can see and know
Him, so that we can savor and treasure Him, so that we can delight in and glorify
Him.
This is the message we preach, this is the promise we give:
Isaiah 55:1-13 "’Come, everyone who
thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come,
buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Why
do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that
which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and
delight yourselves in rich food. 3 Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that
your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my
steadfast, sure love for David. 4 Behold, I made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander for the peoples. 5 Behold, you shall call a nation
that you do not know, and a nation that did not know you shall run to you,
because of the LORD your God, and of the Holy One of Israel, for he has
glorified you.’ 6 Seek the LORD while he may be found; call
upon him while he is near; 7 let the wicked forsake his way, and the
unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have
compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 8 ‘For
my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the
LORD. 9 ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher
than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 For
as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but
water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and
bread to the eater, 11 so s hall my word be that goes out from my
mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I
purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it. 12 For
you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills
before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall
clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the
cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall make a
name for the LORD, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.’"
John 7:37-38 “On the last day of the feast, the great day,
Jesus stood up and
cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. 38 Whoever
believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart
will flow rivers of living water.”'"
* Various portions of this sermon are from “Sex and the Supremacy of Christ” by Dr. John Piper. Also, quoted is “Let the Nations be Glad” by Dr. Piper.
What we’re
praying for:
- Missions- International (
- Missions- Local (intentional increase in our
evangelistic efforts through relationships, preaching, internet and
outreach)
- Mercy
Ministry- International
(orphanages in
- Mercy
Ministry- Local (single
mothers, orphans, homeless teens, women getting off drugs, convalescent
centers)
- Church
Planting- International
(Africa,
- Church
Planting- National (assessing
and training pastors nationally through Acts 29)
- Church
Planting- Local (raising funds
for The Resolved in
- Finances- that we would be responsible and yet act in
faith to God’s prompting to pursue these opportunities. That God
would bring us all we need, above and beyond what we can think or ask.
- Leadership
Development- continuing to find
and develop leaders to grow in their faith and take on the beautiful work
of the ministry entrusted to our care by God.
- Conversion
of the Lost to Christ
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