Why this vision?

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. As you know, we just kicked off a three week series in which we are unrolling our vision as a church, which is people matter, truth Matters and the gospel is our only hope. So we had a number of questions come in this week, but one of them is why this vision? Where did this come from? How did the discussions go when our elders were talking about all of these concepts?

It’s a fair question and you should know. So really comes from various parts of our past and our future and what we want to be about and what we are about and how to tie it all together. So as you know, in the last couple of years, we’ve really added an emphasis on essentially people. My PhD research is how to create community in a group. I believe that that is a huge need in Silicon Valley, that loneliness and isolation are off the charts around here.

And so people really need to feel that they matter to someone. And so community, we just recently had a survey as well. Community is a huge focus of our church. Additionally, we added a role, compassion pastor of Steve being involved in the community and getting us connected to people’s needs. And that is a focus on people.

So this is not that we weren’t focused on people before, but this is a new emphasis of where we want to be going in the future, how we think we can really get the gospel eventually to the people who are around us, so that’s people matter. That’s really a direction for the future and where we want to keep going. Truth Matters is largely summarizing where we have been. A lot of people would probably classify us as a Bible church, as a church where strong preaching of God’s word is very important. And that is part of our history, part of our legacy, part of what we are known for around here.

And we’re not going to drop that. We don’t want to give the impression that that’s going away at all. We’re going to double down on that and triple down on that. This will be a place where God’s Word is preached forever and ever and ever, and we stand by it and we don’t budge on it. And so truth matters.

It has, it does and it will matter. So we want to indicate that to people. So People Matters kind of a future focus. Truth matters. It’s kind of a historical focus that we’re not going to let up on.

Then the gospel is our only hope, is how everything is tied together. It’s how those two are tied together. We talked about in Jonah, god has maybe a tension between people Matter and Truth Matters. And how it’s resolved is the gospel that he doesn’t budge on truth doesn’t budge on the grievousness of sin. And that’s why Jesus goes to the cross, but he loves us so much that Jesus was wanting to go to the cross.

We also want to say as many times as we can, people matter, truth matters, and the Gospels are only hope. It’s a fair way to summarize the Bible, I’ll say this weekend, it’s not the only way to summarize it. It may not even be the best way, but it’s a fair way to summarize the Bible. And so if it’s what the Bible says, if it’s what God says, then it’s what we want to be about as a church. You can even think of John 316, right?

For God so loved the world. What is that? That’s people matter. That he sent his only son, that whoever should believe in him. So that’s truth matters.

You can’t just believe anything you want. There’s a specific thing that you need to believe. It’s only Jesus, right? That’s truth matters. That whoever believes in Him shall not die, but shall have eternal life.

And that is the Gospel, christ’s life coming into us. Christ’s worth. Christ’s status, christ’s glory. We are co heirs with Him, right? We are elevated to this enormous status in the entire universe.

That’s our salvation. We have his worth. So we never need to feel insufficient ever again, because he has given us his sufficiency. That’s the Gospel, and it invades every aspect and corner of our lives and revolutionizes us to live how God wants us to live. So again, it’s a fair way to summarize the Bible.

It’s where we want to head as a church. It’s where we’ve been as a church. And the Gospel ties it all together and we always want to point to that. It’ll be in every message one way or another. So that’s a condensed version of many hours of conversation, but that’s where it came from.

So thanks for asking the question. We’re always happy to talk about our vision here. We want everyone to know it and we want everyone to really pursue it in everything that we do as a church. We will see you next time.