Long term church goals?

What is your congregation's long term vision? Do you have one? Is it generally known by the whole of the membership? Is it effective?

As most of you know, the congregation I attend is beginning a new phase with a new minister. There has been a lot of emotion in this process and a lot of confusion in the mix. Pulling back together after a set of events surrounding a change like this is difficult. Add to the normal difficulties a group of nearly 30 men who stepped in through that time to try (very difficult though it was) to fill the previous minister's ample shoes, and you have a tired, disgruntled group of people at best.

Now infuse a "new guy" and hope that all the folks who've been working hard for this long lag time don't throw their collective hands in the air and say "okey-dokey new guy, its all yours!" More than that, try and draw those tired Christians into a cohesive core to continue keeping on keeping on.

To this end, do you feel that a long term vision would be beneficial? What type of vision would you suggest? Does a church dare set a numbered goal; i.e. "We want to reach 1000 members in 10 years"?

I'll take any thought and any comments.

Tom

The Everging Generation Part 2

Continuing in discussion of Dan Kimball’s book “They Like Jesus but Not the Church”

In chapter 2 Dan states that “Today, Christians are known as scary, angry judgmental, right-wing finger-pointers with political agendas”. Seriously, that’s a section heading. He quickly adds the caveat that “most of us don’t” fit that stereotype, but still the point is made. In our last blog, Lisa posted the comment about how we are perceived to be (I’m paraphrasing here) un-fun, hypocritical, narrow-minded, rule followers who don’t necessarily live any better lives than do many non-Christians. I don’t disagree with either Lisa or Dan in their comments. I think we would all agree that the best answer to this problem is to simultaneously have all Christians everywhere to put down their judgmental machine-guns and their pious platform shoes and begin to share the love of Jesus with the lost.
Problem; with all the different denominations (each with subsets and split-offs) firing plenty of ammo out their own stained-glass windows (carefully aimed at the neighboring churches similarly painted stained-glass windows) how can we possibly hope to change this viewed stereotype? If that is how the world views Christians (especially in non-Bible-Belt communities) how do we go about combating that impression? Do we join the throngs of Kum ba yah singing, tolerance preaching, everything’s okay as long as you want Jesus in your heart, people? If that is the answer, I’ll lead the song, the band, the rap or metal group. Here are the words, everyone get ready for the down beat.
Kum ba yah my lord, Kum ba yah! Kum ba yah my lord, Kum ba yah! Kum ba yah my lord, Kum ba yah! Oh Lord, Kum ba yah. Someone's crying, Lord, Kum ba yah! Someone's cry … Alright, you get my point.

As much as the world wants us to say “Everything is okay”, everything is not okay! There are some things that God warns us against doing and other things that God commands us to do. Can either of these be ignored? How do we strike a balance between sharing the truth and the Spirit of Jesus and not being scary, angry judgmental, right-wing finger-pointers with political agendas?
Three questions:
1. Is this really how the world sees us?
2. Do you find any validity in it?
3. Should we be content simply to be the “Faithful Few” on the “Narrow Road”?
Thanks, Tom