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Engage The Vision: How to Find Your Part In Grove Hill's 2024 Vision
51 Plays1 year ago
In this episode of the Grove Hill Church podcast, Pastor Ridley Barron and Dan Sanchez discuss the recent Vision Sunday sermon. They delve into the process of preparing for Vision Sunday, the importance of setting priorities for the church, and how individuals can gauge their integration in the local church. The discussion also explores the various ministry areas within the church and encourages listeners to seek ways to get involved and contribute to the church's mission. Join us as we dig into the details of Vision Sunday and how it shapes the future of Grove Hill Church.
Timestamps:
00:00 Continuously reinforcing values and vision is essential.
03:33 Reflecting on the past and planning ahead.
08:39 Church expanding ministries, focus on specific needs.
10:29 Emphasizing "why" over "what" secures lasting commitment.
16:07 Pray to find your calling and talents.
17:45 Writing proposals is simple but powerful.
22:02 Choose your passion, get involved, make impact.
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Transcript
Introduction to Vision Sunday
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to another Grove Hills sermon slice where I'm talking to Pastor Ridley Barron about the Vision Sunday. The sermon was titled that we just had this past Sunday and I'm excited about it because I'm naturally future oriented. I like talking about possibilities. I like talking about ideas. I like talking about the future. So I was stoked for this Sunday sermon when I saw the title on my program sitting there Sunday morning.
00:00:26
Speaker
Last year, I wasn't here. We were part of the church, but I was just out of state visiting some friends and relatives. I have to ask, is Vision Sunday something you do every year? Yes, it is. Usually, try to do it sometime around the first or second Sunday of January of every year.
00:00:45
Speaker
And it was exciting. It was fun because you laid out the past and you recap what happened last year, which as a growing church, it's always more exciting to recap the past when you're growing.
Church Growth and New Year Priorities
00:00:54
Speaker
Right. Like the numbers are bigger and there's more baptisms and there's more congregation and there's more events and there's just more everything.
00:01:02
Speaker
You're not having to try to pipe sunshine into somebody's cloudy day. But then it's exciting too to then do on the flip side, recap 2023, look ahead into 2024 and start to imagine the future and get a picture or a clear thing in our head as far as what the future can look like.
00:01:20
Speaker
So, I was excited. You laid out a number of priorities for the church that were excited. You want to recap some of your... It's probably hard to say what some of your favorite objectives are that you want to achieve this year, but for the podcast audience, what are some that you're really looking forward to?
Shaping Church Values with Nine Habits
00:01:37
Speaker
Well, this year I did something a little bit different because I actually went back to a book, uh, the nine habits of a, of essentially a healthy church. It's been written by Mark Deaver, who's a pastor of a church in Washington, DC, really great book. Uh, and so I went back, excuse me, I went back to each one of those little sections of that book and kind of evaluated who we are in relationship to those things because.
00:01:59
Speaker
First of all, I believe that Mark Deaver has hit a home run with his book. It's really good stuff that he's written. And I think the things that he lays out for healthy churches are absolutely the things that we push for, that we value very highly. And so when you're trying to build a values driven culture, you got to keep coming back and talking about those values as part of that vision because
00:02:20
Speaker
the saying is popular that values and vision, they both leak. You have to keep restoring them over and over again. You kind of have to keep them in front of your people and to energize them. And then with a church like ours, with the constant turnover of new people coming in, some of those people, that's the first time they've heard any of this kind of information. So once a year at least, I think it's a great opportunity just to come in and talk about these. So the nine areas that we talked about were expository preaching, gospel doctrine, missions and evangelism, conversion,
00:02:50
Speaker
Prayer. Oh, leadership, discipleship, and church discipline. So a lot of different areas there covers a wide broad spectrum in the
Reflecting and Planning with Church Leaders
00:03:01
Speaker
church. But, you know, I think the problem is that many unhealthy churches today can get one or two of these well, but if you get them out of balance, then it becomes equally unhealthy as if you did not have them at all.
00:03:14
Speaker
Yeah. And I have some questions into that coming up soon, but before that, I want to know like what goes into preparing Vision Sunday and preparing the Vision for the year. Yeah. I know you realign to that book, but is there a process you go through with the elders? How much do you, I'm sure you take some time aside yourself. What does it look like? Well, I think it starts with, I mean, the looking back part is fairly easy. It's a, you know, this is, let's celebrate the high points of this year, the great things that we've seen and
00:03:43
Speaker
You know, being a member of this church, it's been a really good year for us. So there were many things to celebrate. But when you start looking to the what's ahead part, it starts with some self reflection, you know, let's spend some time aside going. Okay.
00:03:58
Speaker
as a pastor as a shepherd as a leader where i am i as a person compared to where i was at the beginning of this year what have i successfully accomplished based on what i preached last year so i mean every one of my sermons i keep on my computer so i went back to last year sermon revisited some of the things we talked about
00:04:17
Speaker
Decided you know, here's some things that we need to come back and reinforce and underline again for our people Here's some new thoughts that we have but then I try to be really attentive Especially as we get towards the end of the year to some of my leaders staff conversations elder Conversations to talk about okay. Where are some things that are missing? You know if I bring up a subject in a meeting or in a casual conversation with somebody and they go Oh, well, that's that's a great idea. Then you go. Oh, wait a minute. You've never heard that before
00:04:47
Speaker
You know, so it's not about me trying to reinforce a message for some people. It's actually introducing them to the idea that this is who we are. This is what we're trying to accomplish. And this is how we think we're going to
Balancing Church Priorities as a Generalist Organization
00:05:00
Speaker
get there. So if you're introducing it to the new, it's funny because a number of priorities laid out. It was probably some of the first time I had heard of some of them with so many different priorities. But it's interesting. It's like, well,
00:05:11
Speaker
Like how do you pick priorities as a local church considering i've heard it said that a local church is supposed to be a generalist while maybe a parent church sometimes is a specialist right we have a parent church focused on just missions or just. Feeding feeding the the homeless or something like that is that how you look at it too and if so how do you then make priorities as a local church.
00:05:34
Speaker
Yes, and I think one of the things that you really have to pray consistently about is God's discernment for you and knowing when it's time to take on the next mountain, you know, because a lot of churches will actually drive themselves into a grave by trying to do too much too fast as they're starting to grow up. So for many churches, the encouragement would be, hey, at this particular size, find those four or five things that you are really passionate about and do them very well.
00:06:04
Speaker
And then once you've got those down and you've got strong leadership for those areas, then you can start to take on some other responsibilities, start to look into some of these other areas. Um, there are some things in here that quite frankly, three years ago as a church, we could do, but we didn't need to focus too much energy there because it would have, it would have been more of a distraction than it would an advancement of what God's doing here. And what would that be? Hmm.
00:06:31
Speaker
For instance, one of them would have been the conversations we had. We call them gospel conversations around here. Conversion evangelism should be one of the parts of every church, right? So that's what we want to do. This is who we want to be. But trying to focus so heavily on living a sent life every single day, letting it be a part of your conversation every day. How do we train people to be comfortable in that?
00:06:58
Speaker
There's a point where training people goes from just helping them to feel comfortable about their own faith, that they know what they need to know. You cross a line into, okay, now it's not about feeling comfortable about your faith. It's about knowing such confidence that you feel comfortable taking it to somebody else. And some people, you know, who walked into our church three years ago were already there.
00:07:17
Speaker
which is what accelerated that for us, because when people walk in the door and go, hey, I can talk about Jesus with anybody. I'm very comfortable with it. That kind of becomes contagious in your congregation. And then when you start to bring it up from the pulpit, people are going, OK, yeah, yeah, this is this is something I know I need to grow in. This is something I need to be a part of. But three years ago, we needed to spend more energy helping people understand the importance of it.
00:07:41
Speaker
Now it's time to start talking more about, okay, how do you actually carry this out with solid confidence, looking in the face of somebody who's resistant to the gospel?
Specializing Ministries and Delegation
00:07:50
Speaker
Which is what we're running to more and more, right? It's not like a, oh, I haven't heard about this. Tell me about it. They have an opinion. Right. They really do. At minimum, it's yeah, I've heard of them. Yeah, I know about them. I don't really think about it much. Right. Yeah.
00:08:06
Speaker
But usually it's, nah, I don't, I don't like them. Don't trust them. Church hurt. Or I knew a Christian once and that was a good thing or a bad thing, you know? Typically the spread hall is negative now.
00:08:18
Speaker
Past encounter with Christians has a lot to do with whether or not people are currently Christians. Yep. All over the place. So you mentioned that like as churches get bigger, they can take on more areas. When you say areas, do you mean ministries? Yes. Like women's ministry, men's ministry, children's ministry, prayer ministry, all those different, you could almost call them programs, but different. And I would say not only more ministries, but sometimes more specific in those ministries.
00:08:44
Speaker
Whereas a church of a couple hundred people might be able to have a women's ministry, you start to get into a church of five or six hundred people, then you can start talking about mothers or preschool moms. You know, we're going to have a specific ministry to them, women who've lost babies, who've gone through miscarriages, specific ministry to that area there. So we are just on that threshold of now where we're starting to see a little bit more specialization in some of our ministries. Again, because God has
00:09:13
Speaker
just incredibly blessed us with some fantastic leaders that are starting to come our way. And this is actually something we've been talking about in leadership training with our staff that we do every week. I told them today, the larger our church gets, the less we should be doing, but we should have greater impact with what we are doing.
00:09:34
Speaker
So it's about learning how to delegate to these new leaders that God's bringing our way. You and I were having a conversation before we came online about some of the avian social media challenges we have. A small church, I would have had to have been involved in that. I would have had to have been part of those conversations. Now I feel very comfortable stepping back going, we got good people with much more knowledge than I do. Let them take that ministry and run with it. Makes sense. I find like,
00:09:59
Speaker
I don't know about you, but the strength of a local church often depends on the strength of its volunteers, right? I can almost tell. It's one aspect of a couple of major aspects, but like the percentage of congregation to volunteers becomes like a major one of like how good, how healthy a church is. And I've noticed most churches, I mean, they don't really have an active volunteer base. Some churches,
Volunteer Roles and Leadership Commitment
00:10:24
Speaker
usually growing churches that are succeeding are usually have quite a large volunteer group.
00:10:29
Speaker
Yep. And I'll tell you what makes a major difference. Many churches operate off of let's tell people in our congregation what needs to be done so we can get volunteers to do it. We need somebody to watch the children at the nine o'clock hour or we need a new volunteer to work with our students because the boys don't have a teacher or whatever. The what will sometimes get volunteers.
00:10:53
Speaker
But many times they won't last very long. They'll burn out quick, whatever, because it was about the what. If you tell somebody about the why behind it, then you get people who are committed to it, who are passionate about it, who will literally sometimes sell their cells to be a support of it. So whereas getting a guy to come in and teach the junior high boys for six weeks before he's frustrated and done, you get somebody who comes in and says, this is an opportunity for me to invest in the next generation and I want to be a part of this.
00:11:23
Speaker
And those people tend to stick around longer and grow ministries. And the difference is the former is a volunteer, the latter is a leader. How should individuals gauge how well integrated they are in a local church? Oh gosh, that's a tough question. You know, I think part of that is ask yourself, do I really know my church?
00:11:48
Speaker
Do I really know what it stands for? Do I really know what they want to be focused on? Do I really know what their values are? Because I would say that that's the place of first engagement between a church, I hate to call them the searcher, the church searcher who's looking for a place to engage. That's the first place people start to engage because they walk into a church and they go, man, this church has a strong
00:12:10
Speaker
You know, fill in the blank that ministry that they're, they have this value that speaks to my heart. So, uh, if you can, if you can successfully communicate fairly well, what the church stands for, what it believes, then you're probably at a healthy place of engagement. If you can't even remember what the pastor's name is from day to day, then you're probably not very engaged in the conversation that really is circulating, circulating around a church. And so I think.
00:12:39
Speaker
It starts with prayer. It continues with prayer. How do I pray for my church? How do I actively seek out opportunities to encourage people in my church? What am I doing outside of a Sunday morning worship attendance, which many people do?
Family and Generational Engagement in Ministry
00:12:55
Speaker
What am I doing outside of that to help my church be the church that was described in the vision sermon? You know, those are kinds of places where you start to see some check marks being checked for involvement.
00:13:06
Speaker
And is there a different way to gauge it if you're coming at it as a family versus just an individual? Yeah, I think so. That's a tough question. Never been asked that one. What are your thoughts on that?
00:13:17
Speaker
It's the reason why I'm even asking it's because my mind's been being changed. There's a ministry out there with a message that you should see your family as your team, like even multi-generational, like stop thinking about you and then even go beyond your kids. But how do you parent in such a way that you accomplish a larger goal that's beyond what you can accomplish? That might take your kids or your grandkids, maybe even your great grandkids in order to see something through.
00:13:44
Speaker
So that way your children aren't a burden to your ministry now. No, no, no, no. Your children are an extension of your overall ministry and objective. Think of your children as your team and every man needs to be a coach of their team, right? I do think that's an incredibly encouraging thing when I see a father who's encouraging his young son to find a way to serve his church.
00:14:07
Speaker
You know, I am not one of these, and I get what they're saying, but when people go, well, they're the next generation of the church. No, they are the church right now, right here, right now. Your 12 year old has the ability to carry an offering plate. Your 14 year old knows how to pray. Your seven year old, even your seven year old can find ways to serve in the church, even if it's just helping empty trash cans after the morning services. There are ways that you can engage your kids in service at your church.
00:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, I've always, I've always had a beef with the next generation type of language. I've literally been there as like a 20 year old being like, I'm the next generation, but what about you? Like, okay, you're 72 years old. This isn't a passing of the baton. Right. Exactly. It doesn't stop until you're gone. Right. Yeah. The idea of the concept of retirement is not taught in the Bible.
00:14:59
Speaker
Um, I think it's an easy way out. Um, and I, again, stepping away from a career, that's one thing, but you don't retire from life. And if anything, when you step away from a full-time career, then your attitude, in my opinion, should be look at all the time. God has just freed up for me to minister through my church, to love people, to serve people, to serve my staff, um, you know, just to make my church a better place for people to come to know Jesus Christ.
00:15:27
Speaker
So I have one more question, but I want to have a conversation before I ask that question.
00:15:30
Speaker
To kind of lay out to those who are listening, if people are looking at the objectives and feel like they're on the outside, don't feel like it's specifically contributing to any particular of the points you've laid out for the vision. Should they go and just ask someone, like, hey, how do I get involved? Should they come up with ideas on how to enable it? If they're sitting there and they don't have a direct way they're contributing to one of these things,
00:15:59
Speaker
Should they go out of their way to make themselves and get into it? I know they probably shouldn't just wait for an invitation. Right. I think, again, the subject of prayer keeps coming back around in everything we do, but you need to start by praying and asking God, show me what I really care about. Show me what you gave me gifts and talents for. I'm a big believer in, let's don't take Dan Sanchez and stick him in the nursery to change diapers just because we have a need there because Dan wasn't called to be a diaper changer.
00:16:28
Speaker
Maybe the guy next to me is the dance called to use his gifts and talents in a different area
Encouraging Talents and Initiatives in Ministry
00:16:33
Speaker
so what you figure out what that area is then you take the initiative and go find a leader and say i really feel very strongly that i have gift things in a great example to our church we have probably a dozen guys and even some ladies,
00:16:47
Speaker
who have incredible skills with maintenance kind of stuff, electrical plumbing, that kind of stuff. They literally save our church thousands of dollars every year because of their willingness to come up and replace a light or fix a door frame or remodel a room. And they took the initiative to come up and say, Hey, I want to be a part of this. Um, and as a pastor, I cannot thank people like that enough.
00:17:11
Speaker
because of their willingness just to say, hey, I've got God-given talents that I can use, and I'm specializing in this kind of stuff. The pastor doesn't need to be plunged in toilets. I can do that. It's a special blessing. Every area of the church, there are places where there is ministry to be done,
00:17:32
Speaker
And, uh, typically when somebody comes up to me and says, Hey, the Lord's been talking to me about this and I really feel very strongly that we need a ministry and X area. First thing I'm going to say to them is, okay, draw up a plan and bring it back to me. Cause you're in charge.
00:17:45
Speaker
Yep. I find the power, there's a lot of power in writing proposals, right? And it's funny, people hear proposals and I'm like, they're really not hard to write. And I want to encourage anyone listening, like a proposal is a one page piece of paper with the five W's and how. Who? You start with what? What do you want to see happen? Who do you think should help happen? Have it happen? When do you think it should happen? Why do you think it should happen?
00:18:09
Speaker
Where do you think it should happen? And how? Put all that in one page. That is a good proposal for everyone to evaluate and be on the same page as far as what you mean by X ministry that you want to launch. It's a powerful thing. And don't get frustrated when a leader takes the opportunity to put it back on you because number one, it wasn't the ministry leader who had the vision for the ministry. It was you that was giving them vision for the ministry.
00:18:33
Speaker
But number two, what they are trying to do is they're trying to delegate authority to you. So then you can go and replicate other leaders in the congregation.
Finding the Right Ministry Fit
00:18:41
Speaker
So a congregation of 50 people with one leader, that's okay. A congregation of 500 was still just one leader. That's, that's chaos. That's that's tragedy. So the more we grow, the more we should see leaders popping up, rising to the surface and more servants who are willing to come along and follow those leaders.
00:19:00
Speaker
Yep. So take a look at these objectives, see how you might have some ideas. You probably have some ideas you've already thought of like, Oh, I wish this would happen. I wish this would happen. Write a proposal. Maybe you that's, that's God calling you to take part in it. You might consider that your, your current occupation, like what your current job is and how that might be used to help the local church. Yes.
00:19:22
Speaker
That's an easy one to find. If you don't know what that is, you know, take, take a spiritual gifts test that might tell you some more. And if that still doesn't help, like pull an elder aside or, or anybody else in the church and be like, Hey, you know me well. Like what, how do you think God could use me to help the local church or help Grove Hill? And even personality profiles will even give you some suggestions about things like that. Um, so.
00:19:47
Speaker
With your permission, let me go through those nine areas again, because I kind of scattered across them a minute ago, but let me say that I think that's a great idea. Pray about these nine areas. There may be one specific area where God's calling you to step up to support an already existing ministry or to take an opportunity to put a proposal together to grow our church in that way. So there's expository preaching, which is not just preaching on Sunday morning, but also helping to lead and teach Bible studies.
00:20:13
Speaker
You know, great opportunity there. We've been blessed to have three or four guys that have led Bible studies in our church for years. We need more of them, you know, more men and women who will step up. Gospel doctrine, prayer, conversion and evangelism, missions, membership, church discipline, discipleship, and leadership. Yeah. I want to be more involved in church discipline.
00:20:37
Speaker
We all kind of like when I put that one on the back shelf. I think nobody likes, yeah, nobody likes getting involved with that, right? That's like, I got to tell somebody that they're living out in sin. So let me tell you something really cool though. You know, we talked about this Sunday that it's not a negative thing. It's for good. The idea is to try to restore people, right? It's true.
00:20:57
Speaker
It's just a hard thing. Yeah, it is. It really is hard because it's confrontational. You sometimes are made to feel like you're judgmental because you're having to make some calls. But in every instance, and this is not an exaggeration at all. In every instance where I've ever been a church that had church discipline practice, as soon as it was over with, the church grew faster. It was like God was saying, okay, we're going to see how you handle this. And when you handle it right, then we'll bless you even more.
00:21:27
Speaker
Makes sense. I think that's the reason why the New Testament and Paul calls out so many times like that one person. I mean, sometimes it's like, hey, help that person. Sometimes it's like, hey, we really need to do it. Sometimes it's like, you got to get that person out. It's pulling everything back. It's drastic. The Bible uses even harsher language than that.
00:21:47
Speaker
Yeah, at one point he even says put him out there and let the Satan have him. I'm like, wow, that's pretty severe. Yeah, it's intense. It's all good things. So as you listen to those past nine things, like find a place in one of them. If you're listening to this podcast, that means you're probably more involved than others. Right. I mean, there's a good 30 to 40 of you listening to this right now. If you don't find yourself in one of those, pick one. Even flip a coin. It doesn't matter. Like pick one.
00:22:14
Speaker
Even if you have to, it's better if it aligns to where your passions are, where God's called you, your gifts. But even if it doesn't, pick one, figure out how you can get involved and become part of what Grove Hill is doing. Because when I say what Grove Hill is doing, it's not the organization, it's not the staff, it's you. It's us. It's all of us doing this together. That is the church.
00:22:34
Speaker
So remember, the mission of Grove Hill is to impact the life of every person with the whole gospel by any means possible. And that includes this podcast. So thank you for listening to it. Share it with somebody who needs to hear it.