Stewardship 1 - Living With a Vision

This is the first post in a 4 post series focusing on Stewardship and the four sermons leading into our annual stewardship campaign.
Our focus text for Sunday September 21, 2008 was Exodus 16: 2-15. In many ways its a familiar story that now sees the Israelites having traveled some distance away from the Rea Sea. Now they are hungry as food stocks are running low and they begin to complain that Moses' plan is flawed and that they were better off in Egypt suffering under the cruel whips of their task masters. The story goes that God hears the complaints and through Moses, supplies both bread (manna) and meat (quail) for the people. One at sunrise and the other at dusk. Yet it isn't the miracle that I want to focus on this week, rather its the doubting of the vision that is contained within this story.
Moses had a vision. It was given to him by God and people had committed to that vision as part of their journey out of Egypt. Yet now that things were getting tough in the wilderness, the people doubted the vision. Its as if they had somehow lost their way as a community and doubted the ability of their leader to set the course aright. You see the vision is the boundary of the map. It sets the limits of what can be done and what will be worked towards. For Moses the vision and the boarders of his map can be summed up in the Kingdom of God, yet what about us? If the destination is directly linked to our ability to develop and agree on a vision, then what is the vision of this congregation?
One year ago we developed a vision statement that we all agreed would serve as the border for our ministry map. It says, "Christ United Church endeavors to be a family oriented, faith community called to share the love of Christ with all, regardless of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, social standing or creed." That is how we have defined our promised land. When we reach it we'll know that we've arrived in the Kingdom of God. When the vision statement was presented as a congregation we agreed that it would inform our actions, who we were trying to be as a faith community and as individuals, that it would shape the initiatives to be started and the direction the Council would take. That was one year ago and like the Israelites some of us have forgotten that vision and some of us remember only parts of it.
Part of any stewardship campaign is being able to clearly state who you are and where you are going - in other words your vision statement. Likewise, while its important to have one, if it only exists on paper and doesn't resonate in the lives of the congregation - then its a dead document, a waste of time - it looses its ability to shape and inform our actions.
Without a vision we have no parameters to our map and no sense of where we are going. Without dedicating ourselves to our vision we're left fumbling around from one idea to the next. Its for this reason that the first thing we're going to ask people to do as part of the stewardship campaign is commit themselves to our vision. That's the first step of being a congregation of good stewards - having a common vision. Are you ready and willing to say yes?