Casting Vision: get out of the boat!

This summer, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about vision, or calling students and ministry partners to a bigger picture than just “well, we are a group of students and staff that love Jesus and want to share him with others.”

And the vision is really simple: that students would follow Jesus. But what does it mean to really follow Jesus? It’s equally simple in theory: it means to care about what Jesus cared about, to see people (including yourself) like Jesus would, and to act accordingly. To follow Jesus means caring for the poor and feeding the hungry; it means loving justice, and valuing mercy; and it means living out what we say we believe. Jesus directly cared for the poor, hungry, and sick, but he also trained and equipped his disciples to plant the church in the same pattern. To follow Jesus means not only to individually act on our faith; but also to train and equip the next generation to live out their faith. It means letting your life be transformed by the gospel. Friends, that is radical! And were we as Christians to actually live in such a way, it would not only transform our lives, it would also transform and bless the campus and the world.

As I thought about casting vision, I was reminded of the story in Luke 5:1-11, when Jesus crashes an early morning fishermen gathering, gets in their boat, putting out from shore for his morning sermon, and then giving them an unexpected bumper-crop of sun-warmed fish, so heavy that their nets were bursting and their boats couldn’t hold the bounty. Then Jesus gets out of the boat, and he says (vs. 10), “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.” And then something even more extraordinary (vs. 11) occurs: the fishermen “pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.”

So what does this have to do with campus ministry?! Friends, my job is to call students to follow Jesus: to be in their environment, to get in their boat, to speak their language, and to entreat them to get out of the boat and follow Jesus. Jesus calls the fisherman to something bigger than they’ve known before, and their lives are transformed by it. Those twelve men would go on to plant the church and carry Christ to the nations. The power of the gospel is that it not only transforms the lives of students, but students equipped to live kingdom lives will renew the campus and change the world. That's the big picture, or the vision, that gets me out of my boat and onto the campus: I believe in the power of the gospel to transform lives and change the world.