Vision 100 Leadership Stretch cont.

Only a living, responsive faith in Christ, persistent pleading prayer, a preparedness to sacrifice comfort, and a humble dependence on the grace of God will lead to the break-throughs necessary for genuine Kingdom growth.

In order for Vision 100 to be like this the leadership needs to be stretched to address the following areas as previously noted:

1. The lack of praying together

2. The subtle power of denominational competitiveness

3. A growing independence in the network

4. The lack of a ‘Pauline team’ Biblical model of leadership

5. The limited flexibility in function and pay of existing and new leaders

6. The loss of urgency for one to one discipleship of all members

I'll address each one of these over the coming weeks.

The lack of praying together

Prayer is not some sort of ‘magic.’  It is essentially a vital expression of our relationship with our Heavenly Father through His Son our Lord Jesus Christ, by the Spirit of truth.

The spheres of prayer are the individual, the church, and the world.  As a child of God, I have been convicted by the Spirit, of my sin and of the great salvation extended to me through the finished work of Christ. That wonderful salvation has brought me into a fellowship of love with other believers (the church). It has also caught me up in the mission of Christ - the spontaneous joyful, Holy Spirit-directed expansion of the church bringing the gospel to a lost world. Each sphere needs my attention, first and foremost in my persistent, pleading prayer.

The key strengthening Agent of the Vision 100 movement is the Holy Spirit. There is nothing like urgent, honest, pleading prayer to quicken us to the Spirit’s power in us and working through us. We need to regularly and persistently call all Vision 100 partners to such prayer. What is it that stands in the way of such prayer? Here are some suggestions:

(1)  Leaders not meeting together solely for prayer. We need a regular gathering of all leaders for times of open, heart-felt, urgent prayer.

(2)  Leaders not communicating the need for prayer (the reason for this requires some soul searching).  We need to make a much greater effort in calling people within the movement to persistent, pleading prayer every Sunday. As leaders we should teach our people how to pray in these times especially by our example. Perhaps we could also produce/find some suitable set prayers for congregational use to help us in this.

(3)  A lack of penitence. We need to, by the Spirit’s conviction, give opportunity for times of confession and repentance from specific sins committed by those within the movement (ie. some dangers we regularly face & fall too include pride (in position, status, ability, influence), lack faith and true dependence on God, materialism and the lack of willingness to sacrifice, including half-heartedness, lack of love for the lost, and a low expectation that the gospel will save – there may be other that the Spirit will convict us of.) Such conviction will only come through the Word of God radically applied to the culture of our day. Where is this happening in our movement?

(4)  Loss of confidence in (& dependence on) the power of Christ & his gospel. We need a clearer vision of the Ascended Christ and of his mission. Christ has all authority and is the Head or Commander-in-chief of the church. The church (that’s us) is to be the Lord’s forward movement in a lost world Such a vision will drive us to pray. We should consider a focus on this in our preaching throughout the movement.