Helping people take the NEXT STEP in their relationship with JESUS

This month marks my 8th year in full-time ministry. Six of those years have been serving at Hephzibah. Before I went into full-time ministry, I also spent several years volunteering in different ministry environments. One thing that I have often complained about over the years as I have served under different leaders and in different ministries was the lack of vision. Most of the leaders and ministries had really long mission statements that nobody could ever remember. They were just words on a page. Most of the time it just seemed like we were all aimlessly busy trying to keep up with other ministries and attempting to keep the congregation happy. Rarely was there a sense that everyone was on the same page or that we were making any real progress.
Recently, I realized that although I know what my vision for our student ministry is, our students did not and our student team had a vague idea at best. I had become a leader of a ministry that had failed to cast a clear and compelling vision to the people that I led. So I spent a few weeks re-examining and re-wording our mission statement and strategy. I wanted to make it simple and memorable. Then we spent 4 Wednesday Nights casting the vision for our student ministry. This is what we came up with.

Mission: To help people take the NEXT STEP in their relationship with Jesus…

Strategy: …by creating irresistible environments where people can experience
Intimacy with God, Community with Insiders, and Influence with Outsiders.

We realized that we are all on a spiritual journey. We also realized that everyone always has a next step in their relationship with Jesus. We came to the conclusion that we want to partner with people. That we want to come along side them and help them figure out what their next step is and then help them take that next step. After all, isn’t that how you make disciples of Jesus?
The next step was to figure out how we were going to accomplish this. It quickly became obvious that we can’t make people want to take the next step in their relationship with Jesus. But we can create irresistible environments that allow the Holy Spirit to work in people’s lives. We can’t make people trust Jesus as their Savior, but we can create environments that allow them to ask the questions that are keeping them from taking that next step of putting their faith in Jesus. We can’t make people get baptized, but we can create environments that help them understand why their next step is baptism. We can’t make people read their Bible, but we can create environments that show them the importance of reading the Bible for themselves and how to navigate the Bible on their own. Simply put, we can create environments that people can come to and experience an engaging presentation filled with helpful information in an environment that they feel comfortable in.
Next we decided that there were 3 vital relationships that we all need to experience in our lives. First and foremost, we all need to experience intimacy with God. Every person needs to understand that God knows everything about them, and still is pursuing a relationship with them. That while we were still sinners, Jesus died for our sins. Secondly, we need to experience community with insiders/other Christians. A relationship with Jesus is personal but it was never intended to be private. We need to have other Christians in our life that are further along spiritually that are pouring into our lives. We also need to be pouring into the lives of other Christians what has been poured into us. Thirdly, we need to experience influence with outsiders/people who don’t have a relationship with Jesus. We must constantly we aware that there are other’s who need to experience the love of Jesus. God has not called us to isolate ourselves from the world. He has called us to invade and influence the world with His truth and love.
The bottom line is that if it is not helping people take their next step in their relationship with Jesus, we don’t need to waste our time, energy, and resources on it.