Let's Get 1t Together

I mentioned in the services this morning that in September, we'll be launching a 40-day campaign called, "Let's Get 1t Together!" that will be based on the 40 Days of Community, a follow-up to the 40 Days of Purpose that our church did almost 3 years ago with Pastor Gayle. Whereas the intent of the first campaign was to discover the answer to the question, "What on earth am I here for?" this second one focuses on the question, "What on earth are we here for?"

For us at Pathway Community Church, I believe this campaign will give us the opportunity to join ourselves to one another in a stronger way around our mission, vision, and values.

• Our mission is to meet people where they are on their spiritual journeys and lead them to become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.
• Our vision is to become actively involved in planting new churches to reach the 100,000 people in Jackson County with no church family.
• Our Core Values are Real Spirituality, Real Community, and Real Story--focusing on our relationships with God, with each other, and with the world.

These three things--our mission, vision, and values--explain why we exist, how we function, and where we are headed together. They are more foundational and more fundamental than anything else that can be said about us as a church. They represent the indespensable elements of our corporate life, and this is what we sign on to support and uphold when we make the pledge of membership.

Unfortunately, it is too easy to allow other things to creep in to our thinking--like believing the church exists so that I can have a nice group of people to be with, so that I can have fun activities to participate in, so that I can listen to the kind of music that I like, so that I can be around people who are like me. Whenever any of those thoughts surface, then we drift away from our mission, vision, and values; instead, we divide over the same things the rest of the world does: age, gender, race, socio-economic status, educational background, political persuasion, school districts, sports rivalries, etc.

We want to "Get 1t Together" and declare that none of that stuff matters--it's all temporal, insignificant, and pointless. It serves no purpose. Instead, we want to unite as a community around our mission, vision, and values--so that we are actually living out these indispensable elements of our corporate life, instead of just talking about them.

I'm currently putting together a planning team to coordinate the various elements of the 40-Day campaign. If you are interested or if you have questions, please email me. Additionally, I ask that all of you would pray that God would prepare us for this campaign, that he would accomplish his purposes through it, and that he would be glorified through a greater commitment and unity than we have ever seen in our church before!

Soli Deo Gloria