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WHEN THE VISION CLASHES WITH WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING
By Charlie Drew, Senior Pastor, Emmanuel Presbyterian Church

As I reflect on Emmanuel Presbyterian Church's development, two aphorisms come to mind:
(1) If you aim at nothing, you are sure to hit it.
(2) One of the best ways to get God to laugh is to tell him your plans.

Emmanuel Presbyterian Church (EPC) is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America and a church plant of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. We worship on Manhattan's Upper West Side very close to Columbia University, with 150-200 attending. Our median age is 26, we are about half Asian American and half "Anglo", with a smattering of Hispanics, African Americans and internationals. During the academic year at least 35% of our worshipers are university students (undergraduates and graduate students). We have lots of singles, though the number of married folks and families has grown appreciably since we began. We began regular weekly worship in late October 2000 (making us 3.3 years old).

I knew from the start that I needed to give our core group (and myself) something to aim at; and so (before our first Vision Meeting), I drafted a statement featuring core beliefs, core commitments and a rationale for the enterprise. I knew, on the other hand, that there was no way that any of us could predict the future, so I wrote a commitment to flexibility into the Vision Statement:

About eighteen months into our life as a church I began to hear some rumblings. At its heart complaint was this: "Emmanuel isn't exactly what I hoped it would be." In some cases the rumbling was over failure to flesh out the stated vision, and in some cases it had nothing to do with the vision.

As I processed these complaints (and it was distressing to have complaints so early in the church's development), I realized that my leadership team needed to do four things.

- First, we needed to reassure the congregation by telling them that we too saw the gaps between vision and reality, and that such gaps were normal (even inevitable) in the first few years of a new church.

- Second, we needed to review the gaps carefully and honestly.

- Third, we needed to decide what to do about the gaps: In what areas should we refine the vision and in what areas should we vigorously reassert the vision. (This task called for wisdom: If we refined the vision to fit the facts, were we submitting to God's providence or just being lazy?).

- Fourth, we needed to articulate the vision with much greater frequency (we realized that some of the complaints arose from the fact that people simply did not know it).

Let me illustrate. The original vision called for "socioeconomic diversity". Eighteen months into our life as a church we had lots of racial diversity but hardly any socioeconomic diversity. We were upper middle class, educated and professional. A few times we had visitors from the lower socio-economic end, whom we sought to welcome warmly, and whom we assisted financially and otherwise. But they never stayed. We had to face the fact that if we were to have such folks regularly in our worship services, we would have to change the services and my preaching style so dramatically that (a) we would probably lose many of the folks who were presently coming and (b) we would be insulting to the folks we were trying to reach by doing a poor job at trying to imitate what they would be more comfortable with. We noted, further, that we alone were bringing to our neighborhood the combination of evangelical/reformed theology, contemporary/liturgical worship, and university/professional "friendliness", and that we should probably keep doing it. We still wanted to connect significantly to the poor (one of our core commitments), but we realized that we needed to figure out a different way of doing so–most likely through partnerships with local churches that have thriving ministries with the poor.

Let me give a second illustration. Our original vision statement described us as a "neighborhood church", locally "rooted... seeking in the long run to have its own 24/7 facility." At present only about 45% of our membership lives in the general neighborhood, and even fewer in Morningside Heights (our students, most of whom are at Columbia, increase this proportion dramatically, but few of them are members). What have we done in this case with the clash between vision and what's really happening in our church? We have determined not to modify the vision statement. What this means practically is that we welcome any who come, but we continue to be local in our focus and ministry: we urge people to live in Morningside Heights, we strive to make staff salaries compatible with living in this neighborhood, and we commit our mercy giving and efforts to people and ministries that are local to us. Of the 45% who are local a number of them have chosen to do so precisely because we have continued to stress the "neighborhood church" idea.

Paul wrote to the Philippians: "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." God comforts us immeasurably with these words. But he also reminds us that we may have to sweat a little trying to figure out what he is up to.