Three Stories of Vision

I mentioned I referenced our vision statement a few minutes ago. It's that which I would kind of like to launch off of and talk about today, because you may or may not be aware that we recently redid our vision statement in the church, which is a part of our strategic plan.

The church operates off of a strategic plan, which again, for most people in the church, they don't pay that much attention to it. Strategic plan, businesses do this all the time. Sometimes we do that on a smaller scale in our own personal life or a family, as we plan certain things.

But the Council of Elders went through an overview and a retooling of that this past year.

And one of the things that we did is we tinkered with what we put into this plan, which basically guides how we do the work every day when we go in to do the work of the church.

We endeavor to get it closer to the Scripture, to the Bible.

And not that the Bible wasn't talked in it before, but we wanted, as we kind of rethought through certain things, we included more Scripture.

And when it came to the vision statement, we thought that it was time to visit that and look at it very clearly, especially in the life of the events of the last two years, the troubles that we've come through, and where we need to be as a church.

At a certain level of time.

Very briefly, a vision statement is something that is different from a mission statement.

We have both. The mission of the United Church of God is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God in all the world and make disciples in all nations and to care for those disciples. That's our mission. That has to change from the beginning of the United Church of God. That's right out of Scripture as well. Matthew 28, certainly Matthew 24, 14 as well. To preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God in all the world and make disciples. That's what we do. And everything we do in our planning and thinking and activities for the church, the media, for all aspects of the church is to accomplish that mission.

A vision sets above a mission statement in our planning. I'll just kind of point this out to you here for those of you that can see it here. This is the first page of our strategic plan. And the mission statement is right here. And the vision statement is at the very top of the chart.

Now, that doesn't mean one is more important than the other. It's just the way it flows. Because a vision is really where you want to be. It's not what you do, but it's why you do it. And it's what you want to become. It's a picture of where you want to be three years, five years, ten years down the road.

So, the business says, this is where we are today. We want to be here. How do we get from here to there? This is our vision up here. And so, everything works to that end. We know where we are today in terms of the church, our position. You can look at numbers. You can look at it subjectively. Look at what is the quality of the church, what's the spiritual condition of the church, all these many factors. This is where we are. This is where we want to be. That's your vision. It's a picture of where you want to be in any given frame of time. Three years, five years, whatever it might be. And that's all a vision is for anyone. If you want to be living in a half million dollar home by age 30, or a retiree is a millionaire by age 40 or whatever, that may be a goal or it may be a vision for you. A goal is something kind of in the short term that you set for yourself, graduate from high school, get a two-year degree, get trained in this, get a certification for this. Those are kind of goals that we set. A little different from a vision. A vision is what you want to be as a result of the goals that you accomplish and the mission that you do. What do you want to be? So we said, what do we want to be in three years, five years? What do we need to be? In other words, and it really came down to this most important question, what does Christ want us to be? What does God want us to be as a church? Especially in the result of the last two years, deep soul searching for every one of us in the United Church of God. Deep, deep soul searching. Why? And what is it that we need to learn? What do we want to be in one sense so we never have to go through this again, God willing? God help us all. So we crafted a vision statement. Here, I'll just read it to you. Our vision is a church led by God's Holy Spirit, joined and knit together by what every member supplies, with all doing their share, and growing in love to fulfill God's great purpose for humanity to bring many children to glory. And then we reference Ephesians 4, verse 16, and Hebrews 2.10. That statement of vision comes from those two verses. Ephesians 4.16 and Hebrews 2.10. We want to be a church led by God's Spirit, joined and knit together, not divided, but by what every member supplies, all doing their share, growing in love to fulfill God's purpose. Personally, I feel that we were led to detect what is Christ's vision for the church, to take it right out of Scripture. If we can do that, I want to be a part of that church. I want to be a part of that body of people that is actually working toward that end and accomplishing it. That's why we went to New England last week to gather comments and thoughts and ideas from members. We could have done the same here or in any other congregation as well, but for a number of reasons, we chose to go up there and sit down and let people tell their story. We'll weave that into a message from Mr. Leuker, from Mr. Eddington, Bill Eddington. We gave a sermon on this at the General Conference at an elders meeting in May, and some other messages that we have as well, to illustrate the need for us to be moving toward that vision of being fitly framed together. Now, let's kind of bring this down to your level of mind, what I'd like to do here in the remainder of my time, because the church can have a vision statement, the business can have a vision statement, and individuals, every one of us, can have a vision of the type of person we would want to be in three years or five years.

I think we all know the name Stephen Covey. Mr. Covey wrote the book, Seven Habits of Highly Successful or Highly Effective People. He died this past week. His book kind of took the whole business world, self-help, management thinking by storm 25 or more years ago, and spawned a whole industry, at least for his family.

But one of his major things I was reading about this week was that the exercises that he would put people through, as you read the book, was a vision type of exercise. He would say, imagine yourself at your funeral, and you're hearing people eulogize you. What do you want them to say? He was going through a vision exercise. What type of person do you want to be remembered as? Then you back yourself up, and you realize, if I want to be remembered as kind, compassionate, giving, caring, whatever, then I better put in place certain actions and behavioral modifications, whatever, today, so that I can get to that thing. That would be my legacy. That's kind of what a vision is, at whatever scale you do it. Your level, a level of a charitable organization, a church, or a large multinational organization business. What is it you want to be? It's your future. You envision that future. It's where you want to be, and it's certainly where every one of us is going in our life. What I'd like to do in the remainder of my time is to go through three stories, episodes, that show us the power of this habit of vision, the power of being able to look into your future and make certain decisions as to where you want to be, also to look into the future through someone else's eyes about you. And then, thirdly, to see God's vision and God's future for us. Story number one. This goes back to World War II, from the death camps with the Germans. There was an Austrian Jew whose family was taken to these camps. This man's name was Victor Frankl. Victor Frankl was a psychologist, psychiatrist, but he was also Jewish. When his country in Austria was overrun by the Nazis, he was among those gathered up, taken to one of the concentration camps. He survived several years in Auschwitz. All of his family died. Mr. Frankl lived. He lived to a ripe old age, he's got a few years ago. He wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning. Very well-known book, still in print. And in it, he recounts what he learned as he observed the treatment that they received in the death camps and how people survived it and why people didn't survive it.

Because he was there when the Allied troops opened the gates and liberated the camps. He was emaciated, just like any others that survived, but they left behind many who didn't. And he watched the inhumanity of the Germans that took over, and as they were in that concentration camp environment, completely demoralized the Jewish prisoners. One by one, he watched men give up on any hope of surviving the experience. I don't know how much you've ever read of those stories. There was a period of time I read a number of books, and I haven't read any too much in recent years, but probably Schindler's List was my last biggest immersion into that subject, and I did that just through a movie. But to read it, to watch it, for you and I to experience it vicariously, we weren't there. I read it in the watch and I went, how long would I have lasted? If I had not gone into the ovens, if I had been off-worker and seen all of that, how long would I have lasted? Victor Frankl studied that, watched it, and he saw people give up any hope of surviving the experience.

But as he wrote about it later in his book, Man's Search for Meaning, he came to realize that he noticed that when men gave up any hope, they lost then the will to live, and they died soon after. Death was not far off. But his observation for those who lived, including himself, and survived, it was because, he said, we came to the conclusion that there was something significant yet for us to do.

And he recounts how he envisioned himself in a warm, posh theater, giving a lecture off of a stage about his experiences.

And he envisioned that, he put that in his mind, and that helped him through the days, the cold and the hunger and the privations, to realize, I've got to live to explain this, and explain this thing that I had learned. And he envisioned himself in that way, and it kept him going. It's a brilliant, dramatic story. He said that others who realized that there was someone or something yet for them to do, someone or something yet to live for, they had a better chance of surviving. For him, it was enough to keep him living and doing his job, and he survived. And he wrote about it, and he found that a whole branch of psychotherapy, as a result of that, through the years, he kept a clear vision defined in his mind, and he drove him forward. Those who lost any type of vision were dead.

You know, at times, you and I find ourselves not in a concentration camp, but going through it.

One of those troughs or sloths of life where we may be down, depressed, there may be certain situations, health, financial, finances, or otherwise, that depress us, discourage us, hold us back, set us back.

And we wonder, is there any hope? Was there any future for us? The best years of our lives behind us?

First, we get to lay off slip. What am I going to do?

And we all have to face those things at various levels and through various situations.

And again, hope, seeing a future, recognizing that, hey, there's life beyond this, is very, very important.

One of the things that happens so much with young people today, especially, and one of the reasons that suicide rate is so high among teenagers, is that something happens to a boyfriend or girlfriend or another group of adolescents, turn their back on them, drop them or whatever, and all of a sudden their whole world is shattered and they see no future. And in many cases, it is the cause of suicide.

They see no hope ahead of them. Their vision disappears.

Having that for ourselves, being able to develop that and keep it in mind, is something that we must have, very importantly, in our life.

Turn over to Jeremiah 32. What a point. Point us to an episode of the life of Jeremiah in the story here.

But I think it illustrates this. Jeremiah was the prophet who God sent to Judah, just as it was in its last years of decline prior to the Babylonians coming in, capturing the city, destroying the temple, carting off the people, including those of Daniel and his friends, and that period of time, destroying Jerusalem. Jeremiah was the prophet that God sent to warn and to try to bring people to repentance as a result of that.

Jeremiah lived through the siege of Jerusalem. He saw the Babylonian armies surround the city, and he himself went through the deprivation of rejection by his own people, the king and others, because they didn't listen to his message, and they abused him. And here in chapter 32, we find a very interesting exercise God put him through. I think it helps to draw us into this matter of having a vision of something yet to do. Jeremiah 32, verse 1. I'll just skim through some of the highlights of this chapter. The word came to Jeremiah from the Lord in the 10th year of Zedekiah, the king of Judah, which was the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar. Then the king of Babylon's army besieged Jerusalem. Jeremiah, the prophet, was shut up in the court of prison, which was in the king's house. Because they sent to him, stopped prophesying. They didn't like his message, it says. And Jeremiah said, God's going to bring and give the city to the Babylonians unless you repent. So they didn't like that message, they put him in jail. That solves the problem, right? Not really. Think about Jeremiah. He sees the armies surrounding the city. He knows what that means. In a sense, the whole city is captive. And for him, he's put in jail by his own king for what he's done. Talk about being demoralized and cut off. He's not only in a city that's in prison, but he's in his own personal prison because of who he was and what he was doing.

And then God tells him to do something. In the midst of this most depressing, demoralizing moment of his life, he tells him to do something. Down in verse 6, Jeremiah said, the word of God came to me saying, Behold, Hanomel, the son of Shalom, your uncle, your first cousin, will come to you saying, Buy my field, which is in Ann of Thoth, short of the sub-over Jerusalem, for the right of redemption is yours to buy it.

Think this through. The city's surrounded by an army. The country's going to go down and talk about watching the stock market drop. And real estate prices starting to drop? What kind of a future we got? There's not going to be any power that's going to come in. And you're a penniless prophet. You're in jail. Why in the world would you want to buy 40 acres?

God says, you're going to be offered a piece of real estate. And he basically tells him, I bought the field in verse 9, because it happened. Hanomel did come to him. In verse 10, I signed the deed, sealed it with two witnesses, paid over the money, went to closing, and paid up.

I took the purchased deed, verse 11, and was sealed according to the law. All notarized, recorded with the clerk. And he took it and gave that purchased deed and then filed it with all the proper authorities. And then he comes down to verse 16. He says, when I delivered the purchased deed to Baruch, the son of Uriah, I prayed to God, saying, God, you've made the heavens. There's nothing too hard for you. You show loving kindness. You've set signs, going down to verse 20, you've brought your people through the land of Egypt, and kind of recounts the history of the nation. And they came in here. Then down to verse 25, he said, you've said to me, buy the field for money and take witnesses, yet the city has been given them the hands of the Caledians. Why? What's the purpose of this? Well, as these dialogues happen between God and his prophets, verse 26, the Word of God came to Jeremiah, saying, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Shut up! Is there anything too hard for me? Debbie and I had this conversation recently. She's been going through it in her own personal study book, The Job. And I was getting ready for work one morning, and she says, what's the purpose of Job? In the book, in the Bible, she says, they're all just whining. You know, he loses...he goes through all his trials, and you read through the first 30 or so odd chapters of Job, and she's trying to depress it. What's the purpose of this? And I thought about it, went on to work that day, and I kind of did a little study myself, and I turned...in my own study, I turned back to...just to make sure I get the chapter right.

Chapter 42, Debbie. Job 30...yeah, Job 38. I turned to Job 38. God answered Job out of the whirlwind. And he said, who is this in the guidance council? By words without knowledge. Prepare yourself like a man. I'll question you, and you'll answer me.

I said, Debbie...I can explain it today. I said, Debbie, the purpose of Job is to get through 37 chapters of life before God says, who are you? Shut up. I know it's kind of blunt, but sometimes you have to understand that that's kind of the way God wrote the Bible and put people through certain situations. Who are you, Job, and your whiny friends? Shut up. You weren't around when I did this and this, and I'm working something out here. Now listen to me. I think sometimes, you know, we all need to kind of take a step back and recognize that. Jeremiah was kind of having that kind of a moment here, as he said, why did you want me to buy this? Well, God goes through further explanation and going down here in chapter 32. He basically says, I'm going to bring your people back. God's vision for Jerusalem was, and the Jews was, I'm going to bring them back. They're going to bring them back. There's not going to be any captivity, but there is a reason for this, and there's going to be a day when they will come back, in spite of their problems. Verse 37, I will gather them out of the countries where I have driven them in my anger and fury, and bring them back to dwell safely. They will be my people. I will be their God. I'll give them one heart in one way, but they may fear forever for the good of them and their children after them. And I'll make an everlasting covenant. Verse 41, I'll rejoice over them to do them good, and I'll plant them in the land. Essentially, he's saying, going on here, the fields will be bought in this land, verse 43, of which you say it's desolate, without man or means. Men will buy fields for money, sign deeds, and seal them, and take witnesses in the land of Benjamin, and place them around Jerusalem. And I will cause, at the end of verse 30-44, their captives to return. He's saying, Jeremiah, you're buying it at a fire sale right now, and it's going to be worth some money for somebody, some of your family, probably, down the road. But you've got to have hope. You've got to see the end from the beginning. That's why he had to go and buy that field, why it's recorded for us here. Because God had a vision, and Jeremiah needed to keep focused on that vision for himself. He came down to even buying a lot of land. And that's why sometimes, you know, as we study prophecy in our own time and application today, and we think about living in this time period of human history, when's Christ going to return, and what should we do? It impacts our decisions that we will make. You don't stop living. You paint that barn. You put in that new well if you need to. You plan for the future. Someone once said, if I knew Christ was coming back tomorrow, I'd plant a tree today. Okay? If you knew, and I don't know, you don't either. But if I knew Christ was coming back tomorrow, I'd plant a tree today, and I'd plant it for 30 years. Some of the decisions that we're contemplating and examining, just in our media area, and even in our whole church, we're planning for 30 years. We're not planning to go away and dry up as a United Church of God. We're training a ministry. I didn't mention the announcements that we're starting an online training program for our ministers after the feast this year.

We are planning for the future. We are planning media-wise, making anticipated decisions now that will have a 30-year buyout timeline. We're not going away. We're not planning to go away. And that's why vision is so important. And you have to have a vision for whatever situation you find yourself in and keep moving forward. I think that's what God is telling Jeremiah here in this story. There's something yet for them to do. So that's one story. Or maybe two, thanks for how you read it. Here's my second story. And the point is, it's important that someone else have a positive image of us, see what we can do, and let us know.

Count yourself fortunate if you ever have someone who comes into your life, who sees your values, who encourages you at a moment in your life, when you're 15, 18, 28, 48, or 60. How high did I need to go there in this room this morning? Don't answer that question.

But someone sees your value and encourages you. So you can do this. Go ahead. Try it. You've got the abilities to do it. And they believe in you. When I was 18, I had been in the church for seven years, attending the church. That period of time in the church, the goal for many who desired, and many who did, was to go to Ambassador College. Not everybody went, but many people did. And it was within the church culture of that period of time, Ambassador College was the place you should go. I wanted to go to Ambassador College. I got to my senior year, and there were three of us in our church congregation that all wanted to go to Ambassador College. We all applied that same year. And that was, you know, come April, May, that period of year, we started getting those letters back. Acceptance or rejection. That's a period of time. My letter came in the mail. Rejected. I was rejected.

I was devastated. I thought, what? What? I was headed for the lake of fire. It was with my feet. I'm worthless. They returned down from Ambassador College. How can I show my face next Saturday at the church? And then I found out when I got through the church door that day that my two friends, they got accepted to Ambassador College. So I was, you imagine how I felt. And so that day, church, we met in a hotel room. Bigger than this one, we had more people at that time. I just kind of hung back. You know, I was eating worms and feeling discouraged. Actually, I knew everybody, the elderly, and we were in the inspoachments club, and the people were there. We all kind of went big family. And the last person I wanted to see was my minister. I had to explain to him, you know, say hi to him. I got turned down. Saw when the services were over, I was kind of loitering toward the back, kind of trying to hide back by the water table. And as soon as the sermon was over, the minister kind of, again, working his way back toward me, and I saw him come. It was on the fifth floor, so there weren't too many places I could go real quick. Finally, he got to me fairly quickly, and he heard that I was turned down. His name was Bob Steed. I don't know if that name means anything to anybody here. He's long since dead. He died of cancer long before his time. He was my first minister of record, note in the church. He did our wedding a few years afterwards.

So he held a special place. When he came up to me, he put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, Darris, I heard you were turned down. He said, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. He said, you're sitting on a gold mine right now. And I'm thinking, why? I think that gold mine, it's been turned down from Master of College. You know what I'm going to do? And I've got to explain to everybody in that waiting or whatever the whole year that we applied was like, waiting 15 years for an 18-year-old. He said, don't worry. You're sitting on a gold mine. You'll be alright. I told him, he said, he didn't linger long. And I thought about it, and thought about it, and said, okay. So I went to the local college for a year, got better grades, reapplied the second time I got accepted. And, you know, that's kind of my story. But I could have, I was kind of at a crossroads. I could have just said, ah, hang out here in my small town, Missouri, and go to college here, and whatever else would have happened. I don't know what would have happened to me. But I stayed engaged with the church, and went off to Master of College later on.

But it was because of that moment of encouragement by that, by my pastor, who took the time to go across the room, and put his hand on me, and say, you're sitting on a gold mine. And I thought it would work. I had to dig in that mine. But it made all the difference. But he saw something in me, and he was an encourager. He did that with all of it, our young people. I had an exceptional ministry at that moment in my life in the church. He was very encouraging to the young people and all the people, and very supportive of the church, the work and everything. He was all together and gave us opportunity. But what he did was, what is mentioned in Proverbs 25 and verse 11.

Where he says, a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver. He spoke a fit word to me, an encouraging word. And it was like apples of gold in settings of silver. You ever find yourself in a situation to give anyone encouragement?

Young, middle-aged, old, or whatever, do it. Because if you know that they can accomplish something, if you know that they need that to keep trying, to keep whatever it is that they're having to do, then it can make all the difference. Because you see, for them, a vision that is a little bit clatter for them right back at that moment.

And you can help them to get to that. He did for me. And that's the importance of someone else's vision that can impact your life. Now, the third story that I want to go through is really God's vision. It's God's story. It's God's vision for his people. He does have a vision for us. And it's that vision which is most important. Because that is where we will spend eternity. That vision of his family, the kingdom, the eternal life, and the family of God. Let's go back to Jeremiah 29 for a moment.

Jeremiah 29 And let's read verse 8 and 9 and 10 and 11.

And let's read verse 9 and 10 and 11.

That's God's vision for not only Judah and Jerusalem at that time, but really defines what he looks at us. His thoughts toward us are of peace and good, not evil and malignancy.

He doesn't have a bad attitude about us, which can be different from what we may have about each other or even ourselves at times. He says, I think about peace and not evil because I have a vision for you. I know what to do, what is possible in your life. You can give him good things and expect it in. And that's the approach that God has for us. He gives us in the context of prophecies that are encouraging a whole nation and a people to repent, to turn. Turn from their evil ways back to worshiping him. And it speaks to the large vision that he has for a nation, always for his people, for the world.

And for us as a church to be thinking in that way and looking at how does God look at us, what does God expect us to be at one point in time? What's his vision for us? This is the point to which we come in this exercise as the counsel for the whole church to focus on.

In the scriptures, a vision of a people that God wants to end up with. And that brings us to Ephesians chapter 4 again. Because, as I said, the vision statement that we crafted for United comes out of Ephesians chapter 4.

Everything that we do, every congregational service, every picnic, every visit that is made, every anointing that is done, every baptism is made, every sermon, sermonette, Bible study, camp, Feast of Tabernacles experience that we do, that we plan for, that we provide for, and we all engage. Every booklet that goes out, every magazine that is published, every article that is written, every Kingdom of God Bible seminar that is done, every contact that you make as an individual representing the church through your life, your words, your deeds, your recognition as a Christian, as a member of the Body of Christ, the organization of the United Church of God, every program that we put out, everything that we plan to do as a part of our mission to preach the Gospel and to make disciples of those whom God calls is to get us to the point where we are a church that is led by God's Holy Spirit, fitly framed together by what everyone is able to supply.

Whatever level of involvement and engagement we have to get us to the point where we are joined together, fitly framed together in love, ultimately become a part of the family of God. That's a summarization of the whole thing. It is what Ephesians chapter 4 kind of builds up to. As it starts out in verse 1, Paul says, Verse 7, he says, In verse 7 he says, In verse 7 he says, One of the ways that we will get to the point where we will get to that vision, I think, will require us to really take a good hard look at the gifts of Christ, the spiritual gifts, as they're called in other epistles of Paul, that we have and make sure that those are being sharpened and honed and used throughout the entire membership.

Everyone's spiritual gifts are identified, utilized, and increased. Because that's what verse 7 is. Every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Spiritual gifts is a whole other subject that God has given to us that I think is going to need expansion for us to accomplish the vision that has stayed out here.

Verse 11 talks about that he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, and to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Paul is building here to a conclusion, to be showing how the body is built and fit to be in unity. We henceforth need no more children, verse 14, tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to the sea. But speaking the truth in love may grow up unto him in all things, which is the head of Christ, who whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplies, according to the effectual working measure of every part, making increase of the body into the edifying of itself in love.

Verse 16, that is the vision that Christ has for the church, a body that they join together, and forms the basis for what we have set for ourselves to come up to. That is what we must become, because it is Christ's vision for the church. I think it is very important that we keep that in our minds all the time, even when we wonder whether we can even do that, even when we have gone through again some of the problems of recent times. To be honest with you, I feel personally God has given us a chance to give to that, and that is where we can be.

I am not discouraged by what has happened or where we are, because I know that no matter what size we are or who we are, if we yield ourselves spiritually to Christ in this way, we can get to this with God's help, we can get to this vision. We have to believe that of ourselves, encourage one another with that, and pray to God to guide us and bring us to that end, and to make sure that everything we say and do, the relationships that we build, the encouragement we give to one another, the times when we stop our mouth from critical gossip or accusation, and not allow ourselves to be used in any way to sow discord, divide, or detract from what this vision embodies, from what verse 16 says we are to be, a group of people joined it together, built up in love.

There's a famous quote by the late Robert Kennedy. He said, some men see things as they are, and ask why. I see things as they might be, and ask why not. And I think it speaks to this very thought. We need to see things as they might be, and ask why not? Yeah, it can be, and it begins with us. We can walk together toward that end. A few years ago, a member told me something, as this member was being shown the door of the church, fellowship with the church, for an unjust cause, an unjust action.

And it was a person that I had been friends with all my adult life. It still am. And they told me, as they were being shown the door, before I die, I want to be in a church that truly loves one another. Before I die, I want to be in a church that truly loves one another. This individual is still in the faith, and has even found their way back to fellowship with the United Church of God. And it's probably better off for their experience.

But that statement that that person made to me has haunted me ever since they made it to me. Because I knew at the moment, that moment in time, that we truly didn't love one another. And that's an opening line for another sermon, which I don't have time to give you here today. But I will leave you by saying we must become that type of church, a church that loves, because that is what Christ detects for us, a church that builds itself up in love. If we come up to that vision, Christ's vision for us, then our future is right.