Vision

When I was called to pastor the church in Moreno Valley I didn’t have any vision for the assignment or the area. I was accepting the call out of obedience to a commitment I had made to God. It went something like this: “If you say go, I will go.” A few days later I was sitting in a restaurant having breakfast and I turned my head for a moment. In an instant I “saw” a picture of a high school football stadium in Moreno Valley. It was filled with about 5,000 young people. A worship band was about to play and I knew that the Good News was going to be preached. A vision had come.
A few weeks later I was participating in a night of prayer with some others in the church. We had decided to send teams to the high schools to pray. As I traveled with my prayer partner to the high school the furthest from the church building a wave of compassion rose up in my spirit. I “saw” the families where the husband left early in the morning to commute to Los Angeles an hour away and got home late at night. Where children came home to an empty house because both mom and dad were at work. Where families were grinding it out trying to make ends meet. As the compassion welled up, I prayed. Vision had come.
Those experiences informed my work in ministry for the next three years. While I dealt with church politics and sin, both in the congregation and in my own life, they kept me going. It is now about 15 years down the road from those experiences. I didn’t see a stadium full of kids about to hear the gospel preached. But I did see about 5,000 young people make decisions to follow Christ. A friend told me the other day that they ran into one of our skateboarding “congregation.” He is married now with three children and part of a local church! On New Year’s Eve we were at a celebration with some friends. The hostess mentioned that her children had been saved because of a junior high camp they attended.
The fruit of that vision has kept me focused on what God has called me to do: Bring good news to rising generations and those far from God.
Through the ups and downs of my own life I have had been given glimpses of what it might be like to work with a group of like-minded people toward a vision that is bigger than our own wants and needs. I have had a chance to “see” what God’s compassionate heart sees when he looks into the homes and hearts of my neighbors. I pray for vision. I pray that as we pursue God-given vision that we will listen to his leading and once more decide to follow him.