In the message I was talking about how we make decisions based on our mission. I referred to a talk I was having with Jimmy Carroll the pastor of Journey Church here in Raleigh. During our lunch he asked me what I thought the difference was between, vision, mission and strategy. Without really thinking about it, I replied, “Vision is what you see, mission is what you do and strategy is how you do it.” I don’t know if God just gave that to me or if I heard it somewhere else before, but it made sense to me.

Our Vision is what we see. It’s the picture we get of our ultimately desired result. At Southbridge we say we want to see the scriptures lived out in RDU and we believe it starts with us. If God is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9), then we don’t want anyone to perish in our city. We want everyone to come to a right relationship with God experiencing genuine life transformation from the inside out, experiencing genuine freedom and living the life God intended. We believe the result would be not only reconciled relationships, transformed families, broken addictions and individual changed lives, but that our city as a whole would be changed. We see RDU becoming a city on a hill (Matthew 5:14), where people want to move here (not simply because of jobs, housing costs or because we are close to the beach and mountains), but because the people are different. Where we let our lights so shine before men that they see our good deeds (our lives living out the gospel which permeates everything we do) and glorify our God who is in heaven.

Our Mission – is what we do. For us it is to connect people one at a time, but as many as possible to Jesus for life change. The mission for every church is really the same. We exist to make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20). We are to go, make disciples (i.e. connect people to Jesus for life change) by baptizing them (the first step of obedience after salvation) in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and teach them everything Jesus has taught us (teach them everything we know about living a reconciled life reconciled to God, to other people and to the world around us). God promises us that He will be with us the entire time. The wording and expression of this will and should look different based our cultural context, but the mission is the same for every believer and every church. The expression being different leads us to strategy.

Our Strategy – is how we accomplish the mission to ultimately see the vision become a reality. For us this is everything we do starting with our website (which is often times a persons first experience at Southbridge), continuing to our parking lot team, our greeters, ushers, hospitality team, bridgekids ministry, tech team, set up team, worship team, preaching the Word to follow up team on Sunday mornings. Then our strategy continues during the week by living out or value of community through our community groups (a place where people live life on life together in authentic relationships on mission for the glory of God). Then we try to live out our value of growth through ministries like Fearless Men’s Ministry and Nourish Women’s ministry, our student ministry SYU, our Celebrate Recovery ministry and various other equipping ministries to connect people to Jesus for life change. Everything is evaluated based on life change. That is our strategy. Strategy can and should change over time. We want to do whatever it takes to be most effective in accomplishing our God given mission. That is how I believe vision, mission and strategy differ and simultaneously work together.

For an additional resource on Mission, Vision and Strategy check out one of my friends and seminary professors books entitled: Advanced Strategic Planning by Aubrey Malphurs.

One of the big reminders for me was a definition of leadership that was shared. Leadership is taking the initiative for the benefit of others. What a biblical definition of leadership. Jesus Christ took the initiative for our benefit (Phil 2:5-11), and that is the call on those of us who lead, to take the initiative for the benefit of others.

The 411 – April 25, 2010 from Ascending Productions on Vimeo.

Baptism Interviews • April 2010 from Ascending Productions on Vimeo.

I have found that while we will do whatever God wants whenever God wants, life works best when we are in a groove. If we stay in the same groove for too long there is the danger that it becomes a rut. It is possible to begin to think it is the groove that is working (and not God) and start to depend on the groove, especially when that groove is working for you. Some people are still doing the running man (it worked for a time but it is time for a change). I am finding I function best with a groove, but it is healthy to change the groove from time to time just to keep things fresh. God is the one who makes all of this work. After all I would not even be breathing if it were not for Him, but I think the way He has designed me I function best with a groove (or you could call it a routine).

Does your life feel like chaos? Are you always doing things and never getting anything done? Where is your groove? Your life may look like me dancing at a wedding (that is not good).

Is it time to change your groove?

Last weekend was the Fourth of July weekend when as American we celebrate our freedom as a country. I am incredibly thankful to live in America and enjoy the freedoms we have. We had a talk with our girls on our way here as we passed camp Lejeune on Sunday about the men and women who fight for our freedom as a country.

As I thought through our freedoms I was reflecting not on our country but on the Church.  I am incredibly grateful for the freedom there is in the Church. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ so we have a freedom from sin (that is huge). There is also a freedom to passionately pursue a Christ centered, God given vision for each local church.

I was told by one seminary professor that I should consider planting a church because in an existing church it takes about 5 years before you can begin to lead. I don’t think planting solves that problem because every church has people come along who want to distract you from a God given vision (even Peter tried to distract Jesus from going to the cross and had to be rebuked). I praise God for giving us a vision to reach a city for His glory.

Regardless if you have planted, are thinking about planting, or lead in an existing church we all minister in a given context and should think through the best strategy to reach the people in that given context, but we must keep in mind the incredible freedoms we have in leading the church. Our guides are the Bible and the Holy Spirit. Too often I think we can feel guided by people and really our desire to please people. I am in no way condoning intentionally offending people or creating controversy for the sake of controversy, but spirit led leaders in the church have an incredible freedom to pursue God given visions. For that I am thankful!

A couple take aways:

1. When we confess our sin that is it. We are forgiven. Stop doing it and move on!

2. Men need some real relationships not just more guys to hang out with. That means other men who will look them in the eye and ask them tough questions.

3. I don’t think most men have ever had a spiritual mentor.

4. We are to talk with our children about what it means to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength when we sit at home, when we walk along the road, when we lie down and when we get up.

What does that look like? It looks like  not only wanting what is best for them, but doing something about it. Something like spending time with them (quantity time). It means having the difficult talks with them about bad decision making leading to bad results. It means disciplining them when they disobey. It means holding them and loving them and learning to communicate with them. It means telling them the truth about your own relationship with Jesus Christ.

5. Jason Tovey our Shepherding Pastor wrapped up and reminded us God wants what is best for our children even more than we do.

1. Own up to our failures.

2. Step up to our responsibilities.

3. Begin a conversation about how to step up to our responsibilities as fathers.

We started the night with a time of repentance and prayer followed by a very brief challenge by me to our men from Ephesians 6:4 which reads: Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

We then began our conversation about how to do this by introducing a panel of fathers who while not perfect have aggressively pursued Jesus and pointed their children to Christ. Our panel consisted of: Mike Michaels, Graham Self, Danny Lotz and Jim Young. We were led through this time by Allin Foulkrod. I want to thank these men for their willingness to share with all of us there that evening. Thanks guys.

Allin fielded questions that our men had written out for him and the questions consisted of everything from, “How do you discipline a 2 year old?” to topics like confessing sexual sin and regret. It was a great step for our men to begin to have this conversation about how to be fearless fathers. I believe we established a place where we can have some real conversations about how to be men who are not afraid to lead our families not only physically, but spiritually.

Fearless fathers have an overwhelming responsibility that cannot be delegated to the church, to mom, or to the anyone else because fathers are responsible to lead their families. We desire to equip our fathers the best we possibly can to lead their families. I believe last night was a step in the right direction.

For next steps our Dads were given a couple books Raising a Modern Day Knight (for Dads with sons) and She Calls Me Daddy (for fathers with daughters). Some men signed up for this Falls Men’s Fraternity ministry that we will be hosting. Some men even pursued potential mentor figures who were there last night (fathers who were further along in their journey of fathering and pursuing Christ). I thought last night was a win.

As a follow up to today’s message the Fathers of Southbridge have been invited to a Fearless Fathers Forum at the Southbridge church office on Monday June 29th at 7:00pm. I am going to lead this time starting with a challenge to our men. Then we are going to have an open forum time of question and answer where our fathers and future fathers can ask any question they want to a forum of men who are leaders at Southbridge, and who have sons and daughters at various stages of life. I think this is going to be a great time for our fathers to sharpen each other and hold each other accountable to be real men to our families.

If you are a father and want more information about attending the fearless fathers forum email us at: southbridge@southbridgefellowship.com.

It was Saturday night, I had just finished the final touches on Sunday mornings message. At about 8:30pm, I called our worship leader for that Sunday morning. We talked through the service and we were about to pray together, when I saw someone beeping in. It was Jon Cullen, our Family Pastor. I ignored the call. Then he called my cell. Then he called the home line again. I knew something serious was going on if he called that many times. I also knew his wife was out of town, so perhaps he had burned his house down, that or he was hanging out with John Piper after the conference he attended this weekend. Either way I called him back without knowing why he had called.

When Jon answered, I said, “Jon this is Scott.” To which he replied, “Hold on, I am talking to the police.” POLICE! What is going on? Where are you at? I could not ask those questions because he stopped talking to me. Then after what seemed like a long time he said, “Scott, let me call you back.” I said, “Wait. What is going on?” He said, “I am standing out here by our trailer (we are a portable church), and someone broke in. It looks like they cleaned it out.”

Sure enough someone had broken into the trailer where we keep most of our audio visual equipment for Sunday mornings. At this point it was almost 9:00pm on Saturday night. What happened then was truly amazing. People from Southbridge jumped on this situation and went to work so the hundreds of people who would come to Southbridge this morning would have an unhindered worship experience. Did we have the television in the lobby, cameras for the video venue, or all of the technical bells and whistles we have grown accustom to? No. But the troops were united and at work. The worship team prepared a new worship set (that was pretty much all acoustic in case the tech team could not get anything worked out). However, the tech team (whose leaders worked past midnight), went to one of our elders (Allin Foulkrod’s) office to assemble a temporary sound system and get a projector to show the words (from one of the guys laptops). If you were there in the second service we missed a slide on one song (I think because his battery was dying. Sorry, but one slide was not bad after all that had happened). People work hard every week at Southbridge, setting up, tearing down, etc. However, this week they were working extra hard and I am super thankful for all of them.

I reminded everyone this morning of a verse from Genesis: Genesis 50:20 20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.

What man intended for bad, God intended for good. God united people so that the gospel could still go forth. We were reminded about what we really NEED (the technical aids are nice, but it was nice today taking a few steps back technically). We desire to connect people to Jesus for life change. Today we were reminded that all we need to be able to do that is:

1. Jesus.

2. People.

One of the ironic things about today was that I was already planning on speaking about generosity from 1 Timothy 6:17-19. The challenge was to hold all of our material stuff with open hands. God has a funny way of making sure we apply the truths He desires for us to learn.