Pastor's Corner

March, 2005

Being lost is a terrifying experience. When my family gets together, one of the favorite pastimes is to sit around and catch up with the “good ole times.” Maybe all of us are getting old because we enjoy talking about our childhood. From time to time, I am reminded that as a toddler, I had gotten lost once because I wandered away on my own. My brothers and sisters were supposed to look after me, but they wanted to play. They bought me some snacks and asked me to wait until they returned. I started to wander away after I finished eating. I was too young to have remembered anything, but one thing I do know is that the feeling of being lost is scary.

Without vision, it is easy to get lost in the shuffle of life. The busyness of life can easily entangle us, and gradually causes us to lose grip of the purpose and direction of life. Vision is important, especially for churches. Vision allows us to plan for the future and evaluate the present. We aren’t looking into a crystal ball and trying to interpret the future. Rather, true vision is seeing what we can become in the future. The Bible says, “Without vision, people perish.” We thank the founding fathers of our church, who set a long-term vision for us. The goal was to plant another church. It has been twenty-five years since this church started her ministries in Milpitas . We’ve gone through a lot, but one fact remains: we still haven’t planted another church. I believe if we continue to be obedient, we will one day experience the joy of seeing the expansion of God’s Kingdom through church planting.

The founders of this church also have another vision. When we first started the church, we saw the importance of having its own sanctuary. Within the first few months of existence, a “Building Project Committee” was formed. We began looking into acquiring properties to build instead of continuing to rent. Looking back, it was a great vision. Who can afford any real estate at the current price? God allowed us to see that the vision is within His will because the church outgrew the fellowship hall we were using at Park Victoria Baptist Church in a short time. This is not an exaggeration by any means, but God miraculously brought us the “old house.” What was amazing was that we could walk across the parking lot to the neighboring church, Emmanuel Baptist Church , for worship after Sunday school classes! Near the time we outgrew the worship space at Emmanuel, we were able to purchase the empty lot adjacent to the “old house.” Due to lack of resources at that time, we decided to first build a fellowship hall to temporarily use as a worship place, with the vision that a main sanctuary would be built in the future. It is time for us to move ahead to finish this task, and bring the vision to reality. I am thankful to the founders of this church because they had visions. A clear vision allows us not to get lost.

“Vision that looks inward become duty; Vision that looks outward becomes aspiration; Vision that looks upward becomes faith.” The “Building Project Committee” invites you to attend a special meeting during lunch to give you an update of the project and also to share with you how to get involved in turning this vision into reality. In addition, I will be preaching on a related message that morning. Let us together capture this “Vision in Faith.”