Vision Process Update
Our strategic planning committee and our staff remain hard at work to discern our church’s vision from God. Both groups have analyzed our community, evaluated our church, dreamed up a “church plant” that would impact our community, and constructed drafts of our mission statement and values. I am so excited to see our progress, and I am looking forward to sharing the final product with you in a few months.
Throughout the process, the strategic planning committee and the staff have remained separate to allow for open and honest conversations about our church. This separation could have resulted in the disastrous outcome of two very different visions for the future of our church. However, we decided to trust the Lord to give each group his vision for our church.
The Greek Septuagint, an ancient translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek, derives its name from the story regarding its origin. According to tradition, around 250 BC, a king selected seventy-two Hebrew translators to create a Greek translation of the Old Testament. The seventy-two translators then departed and each independently translated the Old Testament into Greek. When they came back together, they found that all of their translations were exact matches—a miracle that proved God’s hand in the translation.
Several details make that account unlikely, so the story is probably an empty myth. However, Fee Fee Baptist Church is experiencing a version of our own Septuagint story that displays God’s power and provision for our church. Both the strategic planning committee and the staff— independently — have put together nearly identical visions for the church so far. The elements of the mission statement and the values are identical. The plan for discipleship in our church and the plan to reach our community are identical. In short, God is clearly directing these two groups to his vision for our church. And if God is the one setting the vision for our church, I’m excited to see how he will empower us to make that vision a reality.
In Christ,
Britton