Why am I’m excited by this vision statement? For a number of reasons.

Firstly you can see that this is very much centred on the glory of God. You can see here “by God’s glory” and “for his name,” which are synonyms. And really this is why God created us in the first place - for his own glory. This is why he saved us, this is why he does all things.

And so it’s great that we have a statement that goes right to the heart of God’s concern. There are a lot of other churches that are aiming at worthwhile things - but kind of falls short of
what God is really concerned about most of all. Because what he is concerned most of all is his own glory.

And so it’s really awesome that we are working on a statement that aims right to the very centre of all things.

But not only that this statement I think captures very well what the Christian life is like. And you see that summarised here in the two verbs: captivated, compelled. What does it mean to be captivated by God’s glory? Well that’s when we see his holiness and his goodness - not just at an intellectual level, but at the level of our affections, at the level of our heart. That’s when we see and by the Holy Spirit are filled with love and fear and worship for him.

But then we are compelled for his name. Because from that place of seeing and loving the glory of God - from there we become people who are jealous for his glory. We are people
who are desperate that other people also see and love him. We are passionate that others also worship him like they were created to. And when we see people who do not honour his name,
we aren’t left cold - no, we are filled with sorrow, we are infuriated.

And so you can see there is an in-out thing happening here. We are captivated - that’s the inward. And that makes us people who are compelled - to go out now and do things.
But what one thing that really excites me about this is that this truly transforms the Christian life.

Because for most people the focus of their Christian life is on the duties, the actions required of them as Christians. We are told: share the gospel - because it’s the right thing to do. We are told: pray to God - because that’s what’s expected of us. We’re told: come to church - for God. And what can happen is you end up with a grinding kind of Christianity that wears you
down with all your obligations.

But brothers and sisters what we have here is a focus, not primarily on the actions required of us. But on our heart - and only after that, our actions. And so we will evangelise - fired by
zeal for his name! We won’t pray just it’s expected of us - when we pray, our prayers will be filled with praise! When we come to church we come wanting to excite others in their love
for God, and eager that they would also excite us in our love for God. And so brothers and sisters, you can see that here we have a Christianity, that isn’t grating - it’s filled with life and energy!

I’m really excited by this vision brothers and sisters. I think it captures massive, crucial things that we would want to see in the future of our church!