The first message here this morning kind of focused on vision, the vision statement that the Council of Elders, general conference of elders, adopted this past year as part of our operations and strategic plan for the church. I thought it might be good to give you a little bit of a background as to what a vision statement is and why it is important and work that into my message here today because sometimes we don't always appreciate or fully understand some of these things.

The church has for a number of years had an operations plan and a strategic plan that it works from and the daily operations of the church of preaching the gospel and preparing a people, making disciples.

About four years ago the Council of Elders went through a complete overhaul of that strategic plan, got some advice from a gentleman who specializes in that for businesses, we brought him in and we re-worked the entire plan, and it's supposed to be kind of re-worked every three years, and we spent quite a bit of time going through that again this past December and January in our council meetings.

But it's essentially nothing more than two pieces of 8 ½ x 11  paper with a lot of information on it. With strategies, principles, planning, it has our mission statement and it has our vision statement. It's always available to the church, the General Conference ratifies it every year. How closely a lot of people who are not involved with it on a daily basis read it, examine it and study it, I don't know. For you and your life and the membership your role within the church it may not seem like it's necessarily something that applies to you but it really does, although you might not necessarily be expected or required to spend a lot of time with it. It's far more enjoyable to read the Bible and other things than to read the strategic plan. The strategic plan is something that is really good night time reading because it can put you to sleep real quick going through it all.

But there's one element, there are actually two elements, a good strategic plan has a mission statement, and our mission has always been very clear to us in the church. A mission is what you do. Why do you exist. What's your, what is it you do. We preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God, and we make disciples of those whom God calls. That's our mission. Has been. Always will be, as far as I can tell, because it‘s detected right out of the Bible. We've embodied it here on this seal that you see every week when you're looking up here, which is to preach the gospel and prepare a people. It's a slogan that kind of condenses that mission statement into even something more succinct.

The vision statement has always been a part of this strategic plan. And the way it is laid out on the chart, the vision statement is at the top. It's actually above the mission statement. It is the topmost element of the strategic plan, the vision statement is. And it's always been there. But this year we completely redid it as Mr. Eddington read it to you twice in the first message.

Why is it so important? I confess that I have not always focused on it quite as often even though I've been interested in the concept of a vision, for myself, for the church, for any organization. I've read about it, and studied it for a number of years. And it, really, until the recent troubles that the church went through, was not something that really, just kind of finally came home to me in my thinking about how important it is.

The vision that you might create for yourself, for the company you work for, or for the United Church of God, the vision really is essentially no more difficult than this. It's where you want to be. It's the picture of where you want to be in three, five, or ten years. What you want to be, as a person, what do you want to be as an organization, what do you want to be as a church. How do you want to look. Vision, very simple, is what we see, it's what we look at, it's what do we want to look like as a result of the mission that we do and all the other strategies that we do under this vision. What is it that we want to look like as a result of all these things that we do every day when we go to work. The strategies we implement. The mission that we actually accomplish, in our case preaching the gospel and making disciples. As a result of what we do, what do we want to look like, let's say in five years. What do we want to become. That's what the vision is. It's really what is it that you want to become, and look like, as a result of what you do. And you can bring that down to your level, your future, what do you want to be in any number of years because of all the principles you believe in. All the things thatyou do as a person and as a family. What is it you want to look like. And that's what the vision statement really does for us.

And so that's why it sets it at the top, and it's something for the Council of Elders in a sense to lead and to chart for the church. And we had something there to be honest with you, I couldn't even remember what we had there before we replaced it in January, but what Mr. Eddington read to you here today, as he pointed out was from scripture. The vision statement of the church comes from scripture. Which means it's God's vision. It's God's words. It's not necessarily our vision. It's what God want us to look like. It's what God wants us to become.

And that, I think, is something very important for the Council, the ministry, and all of us to focus on and to really get right. Because it is where you and I are going. And if we're going according to God's purpose and God's will, we will become what he just read to you here a few minutes ago. We will become what is embodied there in Hebrews 4:16. I'm sorry, Ephesians 4:16 and in Hebrews 2:6. That's what we will become. That's what we will look like. That's the result of everything that we do. The five points that he gave you, and any and all points that some other speaker, minister, will give to you, and you determine and detect for yourself. In reality, I think what we have done, is to detect Christ's vision for the church, and brought ourselves in alignment for that. A church that is led by God's Spirit to be knit together in love, by what every joint supplies by working itself together, the edifying of itself. 

And so, as a result of that, when we do our jobs within the church, we have to always ask ourselves is this helping us to accomplish our mission and will it get us to the reality of that vision.

A vision is a very, very powerful thing for each of us to detect and to see in front of us throughout every season of our life. It's not just something for necessarily a year, a week or a month. It's really, in a sense, something that's for a season. For a period of time that stretches beyond just the short term here and now to get us through a period of youth, middle age, old age, life itself, as to what it is that we want to become. It's where all of us are going. We are, all of us, we have a future. It's understanding what we want to do that helps us to shape that in everything that we do. Everything that we do must lead us to become the picture of what we want to look like.

I'd like to share with you this morning in the time that I have with you three stories to help show the power of a vision. As I am working it through in my own experience for the role I have within the church, as well as for what I have learned personally with the effect of having a powerful vision, and focusing on it and letting it shape your life and shape your decisions.

Three stories that I think will show you how it's important that we have a vision and that we detect that, that we also are able to detect when someone else even has a vision that impacts us and is shared with us and then thirdly, most importantly perhaps, what God's vision is, that we are able to detect and to see that.

Let's look at the first story. A number of years ago in some of the first studies that I did in this idea, this concept, of having a vision. I ran across a well known story of a gentleman by the name of Victor Frankel. Victor Frankel was an Austrian Jew. He was a psychiatrist and he had the unfortunate experience, through the timing of his life, to be living in Austria in the late 1930's. And he, when World War II broke out, he and his family were rounded up as Jews, and sent to the concentration camps. He lost all of his family during that period of time.

Mr. Frankel survived his experience in Auschwitz. And he lived to write about his entire experience, in fact he went on, in his later years, to live to a ripe old age, and he wrote quite a bit in this area of psychotheraputics, which became his specialty, and he wrote a particular book, Man's Search for Meaning, which is still in print, a well known and a popular book. It laid out, basically, the experiences that he learned as a Jew in a concentration camp, and importantly what his experiences, but also what it took for him, and others, to survive, and some of the lessons that he learned there.

As Mr. Frankel went through the indignity of life in a concentration camp, and watching as the months and the years drug by, and people dying and losing hope, the continued just wasting away of one's life because of the depravations of food and the elements, the work, and conditions, the mental torment that one went through as they watched their fellow prisoners die off and eventually lose all hope of release, was something that Mr. Frankel noted quite carefully and fought even in his own life.

He watched the inhumanity take over and demoralize his fellow Jews as prisoners there. And one by one, he watched them give up hope, any hope, of survival through that experience. He noticed that when they gave up hope they lost the will to live, ultimately. And it was when a man's bunkmate, dorm-mate, would lose that hope for living that he recognized that their life was very, very short. Death was not far off for that individual.

One of his conclusions, that he makes very clearly in his book, is that those who lived through the experience until the time of liberation by the Allied troops when they came in. Those who lived, including himself, survived because they had something yet to do in their life. They envisioned their lives having yet some significance. He recounts the story of how he would envision himself in a very warm, inviting, plush orchestra hall listening to music. He envisioned that and he kept that as part of what he envisioned that he had to do, that he wanted to do, and to bear witness of what he had lived through, as well. Those were the ones who survived. They were able to project themselves beyond the indignity and inhumanity of the death camps and the way that they were being treated. And the idea that there would be survival from this. There was no hope, no one was going to rescue them, and if they could not live another week, much less another month through this. The only way to do that, and to get up each day and you work the long hours, and to suffer as they did. And the lack of nourishment and food was to envision something that they had to do in the future. That's what kept him going. And that's what kept alive those who went on with him and survived the death camps. And he wrote about that in his book. He could see himself in a future role. It was enough to keep living and doing his job. He kept the vision clearly defined in his mind, and that's what drove him forward. Those who lost it for their future, they were dead.

You know, one of the great challenges for a person, for you and I throughout the stages of our life, is to keep looking to the future. A combination of hope, as well as joy. Hope and joy. When we lose any of that ourselves, our mental state can get pretty depressed and pretty bleak.

I heard this story, as I said, many years ago in a presentation on this very subject of vision. And I bought the book, I read it and underlined it, and every once in awhile I find occasion to pull it off my shelf and read through those particular passages because I have found that it has helped me in a number of challenges that I've had through the years, particularly at the level of the ministry and the challenges that we've had in the United Church of God, over the last seventeen years as we have been challenged on many different fronts several times with pressures and issues that come upon us all and sometimes even come upon us individually. One of the ways to work through it has been, for me, to follow that same advice and to recognize that I've got to have a vision of what I want to do, and why I'm going through this. Why this is necessary for rounding off some aspect of my life, helping me to identify certain parts of my character and life that I've really got to finally come to grips with. Also, just to have a hope that, hey, you know, this too will pass, and there will be a time when I'll be able to reflect back on it, and learn from it, and be doing something different in a sunnier, rosier period of time. But, you recognize that whatever it is that you're going through, you've got something yet ahead of you to accomplish and to do. For me, in the work, being  able to work directly within the church through the years that I've had, the experience has been a big part of what has shaped me.

And, so to know that there will be opportunity to preach the Gospel, there will be opportunity to do what God tells His church to do and to be a part of that, it's been a part of that vision. And it's an exciting thing to see when God continues to bring us back around and continue to keep the doors open and even to kick the door open a little bit wider at times to allow us to develop the skills, the tools, the abilities to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. And to see people continue to respond to the truths of that gospel of Christ and of the Kingdom.

The impact that we see continuing to build within the Church of people for the first time responding to the newness of the truth of God, of the Gospel of the Kingdom is very encouraging. Where we will meet people. One of the greatest thrills that we've had was, especially Gary Petty, Steve Myers and I in the last couple of years, is we've gone to the Feast of Tabernacles, we find people who come up to us and say that they're in the church because they found us, found the church, through Beyond Today and that led them into an involvement with the material, the literature, and hopefully the church and even baptism. That is tremendously encouraging. As we have expanded now with the Kingdom of God Seminars, and we see that as the seed is sown, as the truth goes out, God is still working, and that is encouraging. We know that what we are doing makes a difference.

So, I've always kept this in mind, this story from Victor Frankel, of what he learned in his experience and the most extreme cauldron of the concentration camp experience of World War II. Something that as I've read those stories, episodes over the years, I shake my head as I put the books down, I wonder how anyone survived that. Certainly knowing the evil that can sometimes grip mankind where that condition happens. But then to recognize the miracle, the near miracle, of any who survive it, but his experience probably has helped to define for me the importance of that personal vision that we must have in our lives no matter what we are going through at any particular period. No matter what the trial might be, be able to see that what we are doing might help us get to that vision and to be able to have it defined for us individually is extremely important for us.

Story number two. It's also important for someone else to have a positive image, a positive vision, about us and to see what can be done and to see what we can do. It lets us know that we can have the confidence to do certain things.

Count yourself very fortunate if you have someone like this in your life who comes to you at a critical time, and offers you encouragement, offers you a friendly, brotherly, sisterly admonition to keep going, and a reason why, count yourself very, very fortunate when you have such a person at a point when you could very easily just give up, or turn from your appointed path, and goal, whatever it might be, and turn away from the steps that need to be taken to shape your future vision. Count yourself fortunate.

At this point perhaps it's good just to make a comment about the difference between a vision and a goal. The vision is the end result. Goals are those markers that we set for ourselves. Graduate from high school. Get a job. Get the house painted. They're markers. They're not necessarily always the end result. Sometimes those very goal driven and oriented will have a list of goals out there, but ultimately those things are eventually done. You check them off the list. You go beyond that particular point in your life. But it's where they tie into your long term vision of yourself that you see for yourself being the type of person you want to be. That is the vision. And those goals lead you to those as you go along.

I had such a person at a critical moment in my life come to me, and keep me focused and oriented toward my vision. I didn't fully understand it so much as my vision, or as the vision of my life, at that particular time it was probably more the one of the goals. But what he did was encourage me to keep at what I wanted to do because ultimately what I wanted to do in that case shaped my whole life. And became in a sense that which has impacted my vision of who I've become.

It was when I was eighteen years old. Very vulnerable period of life. I grew up in the church, from age 12, this puts me back in the late 1960's, actually to be precise, 1969, as I was graduating from high school. And I know that I run the risk here of dating myself by putting these dates out there. But you do the math, you figure it all out, and it doesn't quite make me the ancient of days, but I'm getting up there. Okay. I was 18, and I wanted to go to Ambassador College. Growing up in the Church in that period of time that was what you did. That was the number one goal. There were three of the Ambassador Colleges. There were pictorial representations through the Envoy's that the church had. Those annual yearbooks that become really large works to relate what the entire church and work of the church was all about, and you would page through those. I had gone to the Feast of Tabernacles in Big Sandy for a number of years, which was one of the campuses of Ambassador College at that time. And when I graduated from high school I wanted to go to Ambassador College. And I applied for Ambassador College. And there were two other friends of mine in the congregation, they also applied for Ambassador College at that same time. And when it came time for those letters to come back in the mail, my two friends got accepted to college, and I didn't. I got rejected. Rejected. As that commercial says. My life was, I thought, tumbling into disorder, disarray, my whole universe was going out of kilter. I couldn't even walk through the door there at church. How would I face everyone? I was worse than the dirt on the floor. I went to church that next Sabbath and I walked in the door and I found out my other two friends, they got acceptance letters to go to Ambassador College, and I didn‘t. So I'm kind of, you know, hanging around in the corners that day. I didn't want to go up to, I didn't want the minister to see me that day. I didn't want anybody, people knew, and whatever, I just kind of, you know, really long faced at that point in time. And I remember being standing back, somewhere towards the back of the hall that Sabbath afternoon, and here comes my pastor. Very shortly after he got done with the sermon, he made almost a beeline for me. And I thought, oh boy, I'm going to be disfellowshipped. I've been rejected from Ambassador College. They know all about me. They got the dossier out and then they somehow God delivered by an angel the night before. I knew, you go through all these scenarios.

The man's name was Bob Steep, a name that I don't know if anyone in this room would even know. He died many years ago from cancer. He was my minister at that time. A very energetic man. He actually a few years later married Debbie and I, he did our wedding ceremony. But he was, he had taken an interest in all of us in the church, the young people especially. He made a beeline for me and he came up to me, he grabbed my arm, he said, "Darris, I just heard that you aren't going to Ambassador College." He said, "Don't worry about it." The next sentence he said literally changed my life. He said, "You are setting on a gold mine. You're setting on a gold mine. And if you start digging, you're going to mine the experience of your life. It's all up to you." And then he was gone. He had other people to talk to. He didn't hang around, he didn't stay that long with me. But I'm sitting here, okay, there's still life, there's still a future. That picked me up and turned me around, and I felt still a part of the congregation, felt wanted there, and felt that I could do it.

Long story short, I went to the local college, made better grades and applied a second time and got accepted. And that acceptance lead to attendance and then ultimately an opportunity to be in the ministry, and this has become my life for now 39 years, being directly involved and employed in the work of the church as a minister has been my life. It shaped everything that I am. I didn't really go off thinking that I was going to be a minister, didn't know or dream what it could be like, but it lead to that. One door, opportunity lead to another.

And what he did, he had a vision for me. He had a vision of what I could do and what I could become. He actually believed in me. Which is a very powerful matter for an adult to have for a young person at those stages of life. You ever have the opportunity to make such a difference in somebody, a young person's life, your own children, anyone else that you come in contact with and to mentor, take the opportunity. Because it can make all the difference in the world. And it did to me, not only just being young, but also at a critical point where I had rejection of something that I thought almost just crushed me.

And unfortunately I think we all recognize that the pressures of even life since then, or life today, especially on young people today, it is such because of failed relationships, or other failures that young people are not always able to handle is a very key contributing factor to a teenage suicide today. Because they have a relationship that fails, or they are not accepted in school or whatever and drives many off to self destructive behavior. We see far more of that today than we ever did. And to be able to make a difference in someone's life like that, and in a sense to paint a vision. What you're doing is you're painting a vision for them, and you're showing, hey, it can be done. That this phase of your life isn't all that there is. You will move beyond this. And if you dig, if you really work at it, you can make a difference. What Mr. Steep, Bob Steep did with me that day was very much like what we read in Proverbs 25:11, where it says, a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold and pictures of silver. A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.

He framed a word in a phrase that meant life. It meant happiness. It meant hope. And it lifted me out of that momentary time and jettisoned me forward.

So, the vision that someone else has for us can be just as powerful and effective as the vision that we might have at a particular point in time for us as well.

The third story, is really the story that we've already been through earlier. And that is what is found in Ephesians 4. It's God's story. The most important vision is God's vision for us. For His people. That's what's most important. Before turning there, there's another scripture that would be good for us to note. Back in Jeremiah 29. It's one of those beautiful passages, of which there are many within the prophecy in Jeremiah where God turns His attention to Israel. Jeremiah 29:8. For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Let not your prophets and your diviners, that be in the midst of you, deceive you, nor hearken to their dreams which you cause to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely to you in my name: I have not sent them, For thus says the LORD, inverse 10, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. Verse 11, for I know the thoughts that I think toward you, thoughts of peace, and not of evil. To give you an expected end. God yet had a vision for His people. And He was going to even return them to Jerusalem. But He said, I know the thoughts that I think toward you. This is a lot more than just the power of positive thinking, this is visionary thinking. And this is God's vision for His people even today. God has the best in mind for us when we obey Him, when we turn to Him. And His thoughts toward us are of peace and not of evil to bring us to an expected end or if you will, a vision, His vision. And again, His vision is what we find in Ephesians 4. Let's turn there once again. The vision that we take from Ephesians 4:16 begins earlier. It can begin in Ephesians 4:1. It can begin in Ephesians 1. In fact a case can be made for virtually all of the book of Ephesians illustrates this vision that God has. But I want to focus on Ephesians 4:7 Mr. Eddington read through these verses here but let's focus just for a minute on verse 7 because what was said in your announcements here this morning about an upcoming Bible study series touches on this in verse 7 and is going to be ultimately an important part of what we are going to need to focus on in the United Church of God to get us to that vision and to help us get to that vision.

In verse 7, Paul writes, but to every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.

Your pastor mentioned that he is going to be giving a series on spiritual gifts. The Bible has a great deal to say about spiritual gifts. I won't go into any of it really at this point but it is mentioned here, and to be really honest for the Church to get to the vision that we have detected from Ephesians 4:16, we're going to have to grow in understanding and knowledge about spiritual gifts, which are the gifts that God gives to each of us. They are the gift of Christ. And that's for, in a sense, a work for the future. But I really do feel that's going to be a key how we get to accomplish that vision. And that puts it back on you because that's really what again verse 16 is talking about, It's talking about you, from whom the whole body, verse 16, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplies according to the effectual working and the measure of every part, making increase to the body and to the edifying of itself in love. That really is Christ's vision for us. That's why it's important for us to come to that. It's a vision that He has for the church and what we must keep in our minds in all that we do as we go forward. This is where we become. Now we are here this weekend as a group of people from the media department to talk with you, to get it down on film, because your pastor believes in you. That you, as a group of people here, embody many of these attributes and this vision. Not that you are the only ones, or the best ones that could be chosen within the United Church of God. That's not the point. But, he believes in you, that you are on the track toward that. And that is a compliment for you to hold and to be honest, that's why we're here. He has chosen to see you as you can be.

There's a statement that many of us who are a little bit older in this room will remember. It's a well known statement by Robert Kennedy. Robert Kennedy once said, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things as they might be and ask why not."

I see things as they might be and ask why not. Christ sees us in the vision that we are talking about here and that's what we can be. Why can't we be there? There's no reason why we can't.

And so, it's very important that we all begin to look at one another and see each other as we can be. And that is what verse 16 talks about, a group of people knit together, bound together in love and led by God's Holy Spirit, with every person supplying something to the work of the church. That's what you can be. That's what the entire body of Christ can be. That's certainly what we feel is the necessary vision for us at this time. And I do think that Christ has led us to focus on that at this time because of what we have been through to focus on that because we've got maybe one more chance to get to that point and it is important that we do.

A few years ago, a very good friend of mine, that I grew up with in the faith, went through a difficult period and found themselves kind of, shown the door of the church. And in talking with them, they made a comment to me, and they said that before they die, I would like to be in a church that really does love one another. This person is in the faith, in the church, and a part of the United Church of God. But that comment has stayed with me through the years. Because I, too, want to be in a church that loves one another before I die.

If we can detect what Christ has for us and see that that's what He sees us becoming, then we will accomplish that. We will be a church knit together and that's the most important vision. We must become a church that loves. We must become a people who are knit together.

Those are three episodes. Three stories of a vision that we can create of what someone else might see within us and certainly what God sees within us.