NEXT | The Time is Now is a season of focused sacrifice for our church family. Our leadership has identified the most pressing needs facing Shades in 2018: spiritual transformation and facility improvement.
With the launch of the NEXT Initiative last Sunday, we curated a NEXT Vision Space in our third floor Worship Center lobby. Its home includes the former Resource Center and Global Missions Room, now called the Vision Room.
This space was designed to guide our church through the spiritual, financial, and building goals that anchor the NEXT Initiative.
As you can read here, we have four spiritual emphases during the NEXT Initiative. Each emphasis has associated NEXT steps and NEXT goals.
Each section in the NEXT Vision space correlates with a spiritual emphasis, each of which are based off four of six measures.
Meeting with God is a cornerstone of our desire for spiritual transformation. With nearly half of churchgoers reading the Bible only one day per week, we long to see Shades moved by the beauty and truth of the Word of God.
Starting in 2019, and continuing throughout the initiative, we'll resource you with ways to encourage you engaging with the Bible. As you walk through the NEXT Vision Space, you can also grab a sticky note and tell us how God has spoken to you through the Bible lately. Our hope is that these truths show you that Scripture is transformative and life-changing.
As you move around, you'll notice 250 t-shirts that read, "Live Sent." Our hope is that our engagement with the Bible leads to gospel conversations. Not that you have to hand out a certain number of tracks, but that as you talk about football, movies, family, or politics, you'd navigate the conversation toward your faith and how Jesus transforms each of those aspects and interests.
We're praying for revival only God can provide. Our hope is that during the next three years, we would have 10,000 gospel conversations and 250 people would come to saving faith in Jesus.
Since the campus master plan began in 2002, however, our heart has been missions. And our giving has supported that. But in order to shine far around the world and bright at home, we must do more than give. Our hope is that 500 people would go on a mission project for the first time during the NEXT Initiative. That could be using some vacation time to go on a project or using your career to engage in short-team missions through our work with the North American Mission Board's Send Cities program and the International Mission Board's Global Cities Initiative. As you move around the NEXT Vision Space, you can view a list of all of the Send Cities and fill out a mission trip application.
After our mission installation, you'll encounter Scripture passages that drive the heart of the financial goals of the NEXT Initiative. We're also in the process of creating a build your own giving plan on our website, but we have some ideas in the Vision Space to get you thinking about what you can sacrifice financially to help us continue to fund Kingdom work in addition to our facility objectives.
A timeline that spells out the 107-year history of Shades marks each of the buildings in which our church family has met with God over the years. And that leads you into the Vision Room which features Virtual Reality goggles that will show you renders of our repurposed lobby and remodeled Worship Center.
We hope you'll stop by and see what we've been working on. The NEXT Vision Space is open before and after the service each Sunday and again on Wednesday nights through the end of the year.