Madison’s Question to Matthew: Walk us through how your vision for NP came to be. What kinds of things solidified your convictions? How do you push through barriers, or people who doubt you/the vision?

As someone who loves to engage in strategic conversations, this is an intriguing question for me to write about. In fact, the two words that draw me in all the time are “strategy” and “leadership”. I am a student of both of these.

First, let me start by declaring that no vision for a local church, North Park included, could and should be the vision of one person. As a community of believers in Jesus, there needs to be a collective agreement as to the vision, the big picture of what God is calling the church to engage with.

Second, a vision can’t be developed by a large group. This may sound counter to the previous statement, but in reality, a vision that is in essence created by or voted on by an entire local church will always be a watered down, non-descript vision with little overall focus.

I love talking big picture, 4-kilometre-high visions. I was trained in this way of thinking in my banking career. My personality (ENTJ) naturally gravitates to this type of conversation as well. I read vision and leadership books as a hobby – it is part of my makeup, my DNA. Now this doesn’t mean that I can come up with the best vision, there are many things that need to feed into the discussion to come up with a solid vision that is executable. But I definitely enjoy engaging in this aspect of life and work.

For a local church, some would declare that the work of the church is obvious, so why should any church spend anytime developing a vision. “Go and make disciples” Jesus declared. “Love God and love others”. Isn’t it obvious? Yes and no. If you spend any amount of time in any local church context, you will quickly learn what is important to them, what they focus on, where they choose to spend their limited resources, what they choose to avoid. This is their vision, either by intention or by default.

So, how has North Park chosen to move forward? What was our vision process and what is my role as Executive Lead Pastor in all of this?

The initial journey was actually quite simple – two full days with 12 people in a room led by an outside consultant. He guided us on a journey reflecting on our past, reviewing our current state (strengths and weaknesses) and moving through a process of what area of ministry we believed we were called to and best capable to moving to reality. During the process I often wondered if this was too simple, if we should be going wider, having more conversations, engaging a broader spectrum. And yet, two years later, I believe that this journey was exactly what was necessary – no more, no less. We had prayed and discerned prior to gathering, and as such truly believed that the Holy Spirit was guiding those days. And that is also a key difference in developing vision for a church versus a business or any organization that is not Jesus focussed. We have the Holy Spirit available and active in the process, if we choose to allow this.

The journey after these two days has been a fascinating progression of 6-month decisions. I don’t believe that I have engaged in this type of roll out previously, but I know that I have used it in other organizations I am involved with since learning about it.

With our vision in front of us, every 6 months we determine what we believe are the 3 things we need to deliver on in the next 6 months in order to keep moving toward this vision. The 5-year picture is before us, yet who knows what is going to happen in 1 year let alone 5 years. As such, we simply look 6 months into the future. It is such a beautiful process. I can see clearly enough 6 months into the future, it just seems so doable that it gives strength to the process. It is not some nebulous thing, it is very tangible, something you can hold onto.

And the journey has continued for the past two years, and we are progressing toward our vision.

The second part of the questions, pushing through barriers and dealing with people who doubt the vision, is also good to explore. When we began this journey, I was anticipating some push back and was wondering how I would be able to engage in the conversations, particularly since I am the Lead Pastor and it falls on me to communicate this vision publicly. Looking back, there are two things that stand out to me that have helped me on this journey.

First, it was a group decision. This wasn’t me bringing a vision to our elders and key leadership and trying to “sell” it. We came up with this together and as such we were now in this together. This was such a reassuring aspect, and one that I continue to lean on. And, the leadership has continued to believe in it and live with it.

Second, the key leaders around me who are involved in rolling this out are also fully on board. In retrospect, I believe that I was expecting that they would go back to their jobs and expect me to keep bringing this vision forward, that I would have to continually cajole us all to talk about and own it. It is almost shameful to realize that I was thinking this way, even if it was a subconscious thought. And yet, just the opposite occurred. They have fully embraced it. And at times they are coaxing me to stay on course. When I realized that we were truly doing this together I can’t tell you how energizing that was. We became a team in an entirely new way which was so encouraging.

This visioning journey has been fun. It has stretched us all and forced us to make key decisions to enable us to take on what we believe God has for us as a local church. It is my prayer that we continue on this path as we refine the details.

For the kingdom.

In your job with youth, you experience both the fun/joy of seeing students make beautiful decisions toward maturity in faith and poor decisions leading to pain and frustration. In this blog, I’d like to hear of the fun/joy and how it energizes you to “stay in the game.”

I started my journey of leading youth when I was only 17 years old, and co-led a group of grade 6 girls at our local church’s youth group. Those girls have now graduated from high school and are living fruitful, independent lives. With my current role now, I had the honour of starting a youth ministry from its infancy at our newest church plant – and I get to do it all over again! Don’t read that in a ton of regret, but rather excitement and anticipation. But let’s also be real in saying I don’t miss having all grade 6’s.

I’m still in my first decade of youth ministry, so my journey is still young, but in the experience I do have, I have felt the most heartbreak and the most joy through the interactions with the youth I do life with – I still don’t know how I can feel polar opposite feelings, yet I know it’s real.

The joys are what keep me going. I often think about the image of storing those joyous moments in a treasure box in my heart so that I can look back at them during the times I feel like I’m walking through mud.

Currently, my treasure box is glowing with cherished moments. Let me go back to my first small group. They could probably single handedly burst my heart open! My co-leaders and I constantly tell them that what they have in a small group is SO rare – and that’s not at all a prideful comment on the way we led the group. The bond they share is definitely not from our doing, but a gracious gift from God. Many of them head of to camp together in the summers to love on and teach young kids about the faith that they hold tight to; a group of them serve together in the preschool and kids ministry at our church; they plan get-togethers just to be present in each other’s lives; and they encourage and challenge one another in their faith. I think of Hebrews 10:24, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds”. That is what I see when I see them.

When I think back on the 7 years of life together, the current outcome is what I desired for them as a group, yet I remember wrestling over how to create that. How do you create environments that foster community? How do you encourage and challenge them in their faith, which then translates to them encouraging and challenging each other?

The crazy thing is that I still don’t have the formula. And that’s probably because there is no formula. Sure, there are some strategic moves you can make as a youth leader, but the love they have for one another is proof that God was in the center of it all. It was a loooooong seven years – don’t even get me started about grade 6! Yet the story we share as a small group is one I hold on to when I’m in the thick of things with youth – there is always hope.

The other aspect of working with youth that gets me more excited than chocolate ice cream is watching them find their gifting. I have one student right now who’s helping on our church tech team, and he’s realizing he has this gift that can be used to serve in the church. Another one of my students has a heart for advocating for the oppressed – it just blows my mind as I watch her passionately talk about the injustices in the world and what she wants to do about it. There’s another student who has an incredible gift of teaching, and she’s diving deeper into that at our weekly kids after school program. Then there are the two students who are exploring the idea of having a gift of creating a program to lead a group of kids through.

Dare I go on?

(If only you could sense the excitement bubbling through my veins as I think about all of the students I get to journey with!)

There are so many messages in society today that restrict the next generation from discovering their God given gifts – gifts that we NEED in our world. When a student is given the space to be able to discover what that may be, and when they realize that they can live for more than just the American dream, mountains can be moved. What a joy it is to be able to be part of that movement.

I wish I could journey with them all and help them discover those gifts, but instead I have committed to doing for even just one. And that one has the power to make me dance with joy. If I’m being even more real, the process of writing this blog helped me re-live the dance since my heart temporarily forgot the music. But that’s a blog for another day.

To conclude, another joy of working with the next generation is those I get to lead with. I’m thankful for friends and the broader community of others who share a similar passion. It’s an encouragement to know that we’re in this together, and to share stories with each other about the ways we see youth thrive.

Basically, the world needs to prepare themselves for the upcoming generation – they’re going to do, and are currently doing, some amazing things!