Lost and Found | The Vision, Part 1
How do you know you’re lost? What are the clues? Seeing the same tree over and over on an unfamiliar trail? Not recognizing the road you’re on? Ending up somewhere in your life that you hadn’t planned?
We’ve all been lost at some point in our lives. Physically getting lost is scary enough, but it often pales in comparison to looking around at your life and realizing you are lost and you don’t know where to go.
Over the next five weeks, we will be taking a deep dive into our vision as a church through a series of blogs about each aspect of the vision. Our vision at Summit is to form biblically functioning communities that reach lost people, connect in Christ-centered relationships, teach truth, serve others, and worship God. As we build these communities, we can see the proof they are functioning the way we intend them to as displayed through each of these aspects. And the first of them is to reach lost people.
My wife Rachael and I had been married for about two weeks when she decided to take our new puppy to the dog park. I had lived in our house for a few years before we tied the knot, and though she had been over a bunch while we were dating and engaged, she hadn’t lived in this part of town before. She asked how to get to the park (in the wild days before our phones had more power than the first rockets to the moon), and I told her the directions she needed to take to get there. A couple of hours later, a very sad and disheveled version of my beautiful new wife showed back up at home with a dog that didn’t look like he had left the car. Apparently, the turns didn’t take her to the place they should have, and I was at Target moments later buying a TomTom GPS to salvage the day (and potentially our marriage—ha!).
“But the greatest hope we have is knowing that God came to us on a rescue mission...”
As a church family, we always want to be a community that reaches the lost—a GPS to Jesus, if you will. If you are a follower of Jesus, you once were lost and have been found. And like many of us, you will remember how far away you were from hope. And most of us, even after being found by Jesus and experiencing the new life he offers, still go through seasons where we get turned around and feel lost. It’s a reality of life—an effect of the great lie of sin found at the beginning of the story of creation. It’s a separation and a break from the giver of life. But the greatest hope we have is knowing that God came to us on a rescue mission, sending his own Son to prepare the way for us to come back home, to have new life, real hope, and to be found and pointed in a new direction.
Reaching lost people matters because if you’re reading this…
...you’ve either been lost and have since found the greatest hope in the world to offer. That hope is most rightly and beautifully expressed through the Church. A community of lost people who have been found and have hope to give. That hope is expressed throughout the rest of our vision being lived out.
...or you might be lost now. And guess what? Welcome to the club! You matter. You matter enough that the God of the universe would do everything to give you direction and hope. And you are invited to join the rest of us who have been lost and still get turned around.
We reach lost people because Jesus came to heal the sick, not for those who were well. We continue to follow in the dusty footprints of the one who first found us.
As the line from one of the best-known hymns proclaims, “I once was lost, but now I’m found.” Let us always remember that good news to share with the world around us.
O.J. Aldrich is the Lake Mary Campus Pastor at Summit Church. He is still married, thankful for GPS satellites, and has since replaced the dog who got lost with a giant white dog who resembles a small horse. O.J. also has three amazing kids and can typically be found with them at Fun Spot or shooting baskets in their driveway.
On Vision Sunday, we heard about how we can continue to be the Church together in this season through house churches. If you are currently leading, are interested in leading, or would like to see if there is a house church near you to worship with, let us know!