Vision. It’s a vital necessity to a growing church. But it’s one of the hardest things to capture well.

For vision to thrive, we need to understand something right up front—the major reason the church exists on earth. It’s to spread the gospel of the kingdom of God (Matt. 24:14; 28:19-20). We could fellowship, worship, learn, and serve in Heaven. The one thing the church can’t do in Heaven is to reach the lost for Christ. So we must intentionally gear our church to do whatever it takes to reach people for Christ. We must resist any attempt to maintain a religious club that is internal and geared just to please its members.

Vision is about creating not only a picture of what could be, but of what ought to be in the future. So we want to paint a clear and compelling picture of what we see for Grace, under God’s guidance, as she ministers in the second half of the first decade of the 21st century.

Leadership at Grace is in a continual process of shaping and re-shaping the vision we believe God has for our church. In 2002, the leaders of Grace went through a process of several months in which we tried to discern what God was leading us to focus on for this next season of ministry. We have just recently put some fresh touches on this vision and we’d like to share it with you again.

We see a church brimming with people who are…

• Purposefully Sharing the good news of Christ with thousands of people outside our walls who have no church home or who have only had a stale religious experience.
• Radically Living the two great commandments.
• Regularly Gathering in creative, diverse, and irresistible environments to experience the depths of passionate worship, spiritual growth, life-giving relationships, and humble service.
• Selflessly Investing in the future by making room for those who are yet to come on a new and inviting 40 acre campus.
• Intentionally Meeting vital needs in the Erie community on an ongoing basis.
• Humbly Experiencing healing for the hurting and health for our families.
• Generously Serving other churches in our region by providing training and support.

The church we see is you, it’s me, it’s us together continuing the work that Jesus began (Jn. 14:12). It’s an amazing, contemporary version of the Acts 2 church.

In essence, our vision is to see multiplied hundreds of people coming to Christ and growing in Him on a large, inviting campus and in homes so that Erie is aware that God is alive in our church. I believe this is vision worth praying for, supporting, and working to bring to pass. What we see is what we become.