Now that we’re a few years into our church plant, there exists a temptation for us to hit the “autopilot button”.

Just like a pilot who’s gotten the plane off the ground, we can decide to just sit back and let the plane fly itself—we could just take it easy and have “church” every Sunday and ride into the sunset.

Yet as easy as that might be, it doesn’t fit well with the sense of mission that we read about in the pages of the New Testament, for example in the life of the Apostle Paul. He never hit the autopilot button. Instead, Paul made it his life’s endeavor to keep pushing the ball forward, to reach more people, to preach Christ where he wasn’t yet known, and to continually see the gospel change his world for the glory of God.

That’s why we simply can’t hit autopilot, because the church inherently exists for its non-members. As important and beautiful as our church community is right now, we exist for those in our local community who aren’t yet members here and who don’t know the love of God that comes to us through Jesus Christ.

And to be completely honest, I feel like that sense of mission was a bit hotter and a bit stronger a few years back when our church started out than it is today.

Today, our church has more people, more members, more momentum, a bigger and stronger potential for impact, and yet I feel like we’ve actually taken a step back in our sense of mission to see people come to know Jesus Christ in Channelside and in Tampa.

And in a way, this is only natural, in churches especially. In all organizations, vision gets blurry over time. That’s why you go back to the eye doctor every year and get your prescription updated. When you’re out in the waves in the ocean, you will have to fight the drift.

So I wanted to take some time this year to reexamine our vision as a church and ask and answer the questions:

• Why are we here? Why do we exist?
• What is next for us as a church, now that this church planting thing has seemed to work a bit?

And before I speak more on that specifically, I wanted to address some frequently asked questions that I hear from time to time regarding a few things regarding our future.

The first question I hear all too often is:

So, when are we getting a building?

The short answer is: Whenever you or your rich uncle gives us one!

Honestly, the more I think on it, the more I believe that having a building of our own would be extremely advantageous. It’s not essential, but would be extremely advantageous to us. I do hope to have a building of our own someday.

The greatest thing a building will do is communicate permanence to our city, that we are here to stay, and almost guarantee that this church will last beyond me, and beyond us, for generations—which is the goal.

The problem with getting a building in this area is that space is limited, buildings are few, and when they do come up, they are really expensive and in demand.

And we simply can’t move 5, 10, 15 minutes away—because we intentionally etched “Channelside” into the name of our church, as we want to exist within the walkable community along Channelside Dr. We would be able to get a building much sooner if we were looking anywhere in Tampa, but our geographical constraints limit our search to this 1.5 square mile of town.

That being said, in cities especially, churches can exist for an indefinite amount of time without a building. So even if we don’t get a building in 1, 5, 10, 20 years even, we can be just as much a church as we would be with a building. I know of churches in LA and NYC that have existed for decades and never had a building of their own.

Also, remember that for the first few hundred years, Christianity was illegal—so there were no church buildings. And the church grew more than ever, without any buildings!

When are we going to move to two services? 

Not anytime soon!

If you haven’t noticed, our sanctuary is getting a bit packed! I would never say never on this, but I would much rather find bigger venues we can all fit in, than split into multiple services.

For two main reasons:

1. Theologically: While I don’t believe it is a sin to go to two services, I do think when you do that, you are in a sense splitting into two different churches. Because the church is by definition the gathering of local believers in a specific context, and when some of them gather at 9 and some at 11 and they never really interact with each other, that is more like two different bodies churches than simply two services.
2. Philosophically: multiple services add a lot of need and strain on our volunteers, and we can’t enough get enough volunteers as it is for one service! If we go to two services, we’d need twice as many kids’ workers, greeters, etc., plus it adds a lot of strain on everyone involved by having to do things twice and makes for a long somewhat restless Sunday.

So how big are we going to get then?

Does this mean that we are going to cut people off at some point, and turn them away?

Heck no! We exist to reach the community we’re in, and if you haven’t noticed, we have a long way to go in that mission.

We must continue to make room for people, and look to grow into bigger meeting venues and bigger rooms.

Honestly, we aren’t very close to our growth becoming a “problem” (and a good problem, btw), but we may eventually have to decide on if we will grow taller by adding people and services to our one church, or if we will instead grow wider by planting more churches—for example, by starting a church 20 minutes down the road where a portion of our church lives.  And that would be where I lean, by looking for us to plant more churches rather than starting more services.

On this, a question I hear often is: are we aiming for 150? 300? 500? 1000? John, are you going to set a numeric goal for us?

To be completely honest, I don’t know how to answer that.

I will just say that we are at a sweet spot right now. And I’m just trying to soak it in!

 I read an article last year about Dunbar’s number. It was a sociological study by a guy named Dunbar where he tried to determine the optimal community size for tribes, communities, groups, classes, or in our case, churches.

The number he came up with was 150. He concluded that 150 people is an optimal group size because you have enough diversity so various peoples can be represented, but you can also get to know just about everyone on a first name basis.

He says that when you go beyond 150, the community starts to feel like a crowd. You can get lost in the crowd and feel unseen and unknown.

We’ve been averaging 120 people on Sundays. This does not mean we have 30 people to go until we shut the door! But we should recognize that we are in a really sweet season right now.

And this takes us to the final and biggest question I want to address:

So what is our vision and focus going forward?

There is a fascinating story that speaks to this, from a decision that took place in the early days of Chick Fil A.

In the 1990s, Chick Fil A’s main competitor was a company called “Boston Chicken”, which ended up becoming Boston Market. They were the other major brand of chicken-only restaurants. At the time, Boston Market had huge expansion plans and lofty goals, including a goal to have $1 billion in sales by the year 2000. They were aggressive and expanding fast.

Their growth plans threatened some leaders at Chick Fil A and made them a bit nervous. So one day, all the executives of Chick Fil A met in a conference room and started throwing out some lofty goals themselves about how they were going to grow fast to compete with Boston Market. Chick Fil A’s VPs and marketing people went around the room trying to figure out how they were going to get bigger, faster.

At the head of the table was the founder of Chick Fil A, Truett Cathy, who seemed disengaged and quiet and listened in on the whole conversation. Then, suddenly out of the blue and in a completely uncharacteristic manner, he started banging his fists on the table to get everyone’s attention. When he did, he said to them, “Gentlemen, I am sick and tired of hearing you talk about us getting bigger. What we need to be talking about is how to get better. If we get better, our customers will demand that we get bigger.”

That statement changed how decisions were going to be made at Chick Fil A—they would always focus first on getting better, not just getting bigger. They would continually look to improve their menu, improve the quality of their restaurants, and be creative in reengineering the fast-food drive-thru experience.

Back to Boston Market: in the year 2000, instead of reaching their big goal, they filed for bankruptcy. Instead, it was Chick Fil A that reached their goal of $1 billion in sales, and the rest is history.

This story reminds me of a parable that Jesus told about two trees and the fruit that they each produced, found in Matthew 7:17-20:

¹⁷ In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. ¹⁸ A good tree can’t produce bad fruit; neither can a bad tree produce good fruit. ¹⁹ Every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ²⁰ So you’ll recognize them by their fruit.

The fruit we want to produce as a church is more and more disciples—we want to continue inviting neighbors to find their identity in Jesus Christ so we can see the gospel of Jesus transform our community and our world.

And the thing that leads to us being able to produce this fruit is health. Healthy trees naturally produce healthy fruit. Good trees produce good fruit. And healthy churches naturally produce healthy, growing, and an increasing number of disciples.

Which takes me back to the question—what is next for our church? What is our vision from here?

Honestly, I’m not that focused on us getting bigger. But what I am focused on is us getting healthier. I’m focused on each of you growing closer to Jesus and getting healthier spiritually.

And if we focus on getting healthy, I’m convinced that God will take care of the numbers thing and continue to build his church. Because healthy things naturally grow.

At our vision night on February 5^th, we each took time to do a spiritual health diagnostic using a tool called the discipleship triangle. It helps you reflect on your own spiritual health by considering the following three core identities:

1. A follower of Jesus—how is your prayer life, how are you practicing the spiritual disciplines and pursuing Jesus on a daily basis?
2. A member of God’s family—are you living out God’s purpose for you as an interconnected part of our spiritual community? Do you have people in our church whom you belong to, who care about you, who hold you accountable?
3. A servant of the city—are you hiding your light under a bushel, or are you a witness for Christ in your everyday life, at work, and by serving others through FOR Tampa? Are you being intentional to share your faith with others?

That’s our definition of what it means to be a healthy, growing disciple of Christ. While Christian growth is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit of God in your life, we want to create opportunities for you to grow and get healthier in these areas at our church.

One of these ways is through discipleship groups. I truly believe that our discipleship groups are fast becoming the most formative and impactful way for you to grow. Other ways, of course, would include our Sunday gatherings, and even informal relationships we all build with one another.

I also hope to catalyze our spiritual growth this year through these “vision nights” we’ll aim to have quarterly. I hope you can join us for the next one, where we’ll be focusing on one specific aspect of how God is calling us to get healthier as a church.

Until then, lets continue to get better, together!