Written by T. M. Suffield |
Saturday, September 30, 2023
You need some sense of where you’re going long term—that could be supporting missionaries, it could be sending people to pastor elsewhere, it could be planting churches or sites, it could be growing until you’re of a size to do a particular thing (though I’m wary of this last one, because growth soon becomes its own goal; growth is only good when in service of other goals). These are all valid, other things will be too, and they are a unique vision in the sense that not every church will do the same things with their limited resources.

It’s common these days to expect a church to have a specific vision, often expressed in a pithy statement about what they will or won’t be seeking to do in their location. Sometimes it’s accompanied by a mission statement—which sometimes is the same thing, but at least in business speak isn’t—though these are more common in churches that drew on a slightly older stream of business insights.
Is this a good idea? I’ve gone on record as thinking that lots of churches in the spaces I move in have missed what the church is for, and think this can be symptom of the same thing.
However, we should distinguish carefully because there is, I think, a good and a bad way to do this.
Good Vision
My late friend Zoltán Dörnyei was a Professor of Psycholinguistics who later in his life completed a PhD in Theology. One of his interests was the place of vision in the Christian life, due to his work on the importance of ‘mental imagery’ in acquiring a second language.
The scriptures tell us that without vision the people perish (Proverbs 29). In order to go anywhere and do anything, you need vision. In other words, to do something you have to first visualise it. Zoltan would teach that you needed to both appreciate the benefits of the thing you are considering and consider the costs of failure.
In church life, if the body is going to do anything—and we mean here acts as diverse as witness to their friends, move to a new venue, give their money, volunteer their time, support a project helping the poor, make friends who aren’t like them, and many more—then the elders of the church will need to articulate a ‘vision’ of why this is worthwhile as well as the potential costs of failing.
This isn’t business speak, it’s clarity and ‘leadership’. It’s also not anything super-fancy, for all you can be better or worse in how you go about it. By vision we mean simply painting a picture with words so that people understand why they might choose to take some concrete actions.
We can’t function without this, for all it can easily stray into manipulation—which is true of much of what we call leadership—where you make the vision sound compelling so that people are more likely to take those actions. That’s a tempting thing for a pastor to do, but honesty is integral for Christian leaders in these matters.
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On June 7, the school held its first-ever Pride Chapel event for its lower school, in which Grace Church Schools chaplain Rev. Mark Hummel began the service by sharing a few words on the importance of Pride. Students also learned about the history of the rainbow-colored Pride flag and sat through a reading of “Twas the Night Before Pride” with their parents.

Grace Church High School — a progressive independent Episcopal school in the East Village that charges over $59,000 for yearly tuition — invited renowned New York City drag queen Brita Filter to its sixth annual “Pride Chapel” event for a live performance on April 27.
The event was sponsored by the school and organized with the help of the students and faculty advisers in Spectrum — the high school’s LGBTQ+ support club.
Brita, whose real name is Jesse Havea, performed a rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The artist then sat down with the school’s queer director of vocal music, Andrew Leonard, to answer students’ questions about drag performing, queerness and the importance of pride, according to the school.
Video posted on TikTok shows Filter entering the back of the church in full drag, dancing up the aisle in a short-cut orange and blue dress and matching go-go boots as students clapped and cheered him on from the pews.
“I literally went to church to teach the children today,” the performer wrote in the video caption. “A Catholic High School here in NYC invited me to their Pride Chapel. Visibility matters and I’m so honored to have had the chance to talk to you about my work as a LGBTQ+ Drag Queen Activist.”
In another clip of the performance posted to Instagram, Filter — who was a contestant on Season 12 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” — can be seen singing a rendition of the classic “The Wizard of Oz” tune, dancing up and down the aisle and up to the altar while students stood and watched.
“Who said you can’t have a drag queen at church? Would you go to this service?” Filter wrote in the post, adding it was a great experience to hear “the beautiful brave queer stories and songs from your students and faculty.”
“I will never forget this beautiful moment,” the performer concluded.
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How could we not long to know more of our God’s good Word, especially when it is through His Scriptures that we come to know Him? Indeed, being captivated by God’s goodness will never fail to drive us ever deeper into His Word, for in them we are able to “taste and see that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8)!

You are good and do good;teach me your statutes.
Psalm 119:68 ESV

This is a marvelous verse and a mighty confession for all of God’s people to make alongside the psalmist. First, he confesses a deep truth regarding God’s nature: God is good. As with all of God’s attributes, we must take care not to think simply that God possesses goodness, as if goodness were an ethereal force outside of God Himself. Instead, God is good. The source and standard of goodness are found within His very nature. He does not merely meet the specifications of what it means to be good; He is good. Everything else is judged to be good based upon His person and evaluation.
Second, God does good. We often remember God’s passing by Moses in Exodus 34 as the revealing of His glory to the prophet, and so it was. Yet it was also the revealing of God’s goodness, for God told Moses “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name” (Exodus 33:19).
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