Vision for the Culture, not the Church

Yesterday I saw a woman save a turtle. I was on the way home and I saw her car pulled over to the right-hand side of the road. She was getting out of the car, and as I slowed down I saw the turtle in the right lane. I slowed my truck even more and watched as she gently picked up the turtle and walked it across the road. “That’s nice,” I thought as I drove on. Looking in my side-view mirror, though, I saw that she did not simply put the turtle in the scrub of the median. Instead, she boldly walked across the other two oncoming lanes to put the turtle safely out of harms way. “That’s serious commitment to turtle safety,” I thought to myself. I then began to ponder what I had just experienced. Whenever I see a turtle in the road, I slow down and go around it hoping everyone else will do the same, giving the poor guy a chance. I don’t want the turtle to get squished. I think it is a sad thing when I see dead turtles on the road… but I don’t pull over to personally carry them to safety. Why? I guess its because I don’t have a true vision for turtles. Let me explain… You see, the “turtle” was actually a Gopher Tortoise, and they are what the biological conservation community calls a “keystone species.” A keystone species is similar to the keystone in an arch (the crown or apex). It feels the least amount of pressure, but without it, the arch collapses. I the eco-system, certain species have a much greater effect on their environment than their size or abundance indicates. In other words, if the keystone species left, it could have a devastating effect on many other species. You see, the Gopher Tortoise gets its name because of the large burrows that it digs (up to 40 feet). These burrows become home to over 300 different animal species, all living symbiotically. Without the tortoise to dig the condos, where would the other animals find shelter? Did the lady know all of this? Probably. You see, my neighborhood is on a nature preserve, and not one block from where the “incident” happened is a nature and conservation center. Take this and add it to the fact that the woman was driving a Volkswagen and wearing Birkenstocks, and I’m pretty sure she had a vision for the Gopher Tortoise in South Florida.
So what does this have to do with my church-planting journey? Glad you ask. It just so happened that at the time I was listening to Ed Stetzer deliver a message to a group of church planters. Ed is a church planter, author, and conference speaker for Lifeway and other organizations. The thrust of his message was vision… vision for the culture. He said that too many people go into church planting with a great vision for the church, but not for the culture. They have a great vision for what the church could be, but truly lack a vision for what the actual community and culture can sustain. We all want a cool church that is artsy, edgy, missional, and indie-rock; but our communities are really just not all that cool. Those churches are few and far between simply because there are rarely that many cool people grouped in one community. I fall prey to this. I am a creative person. I love creativity, and I thrive on the creative process. The idea of having a church full of artists, musicians, and COOL people is intoxicating… but not very realistic. I need to cultivate a vision for the community of Davenport and the Four Corners area more than what the church would look like. My desire for a cool church is very much like my desire not to run over the turtle. Sure, I don’t want to see the community die, but I am more interested in making the church what I want it to be. I need to be like the lady who deeply understood the implications of a dead turtle. Lord, please help me to grow in love and compassion for the people of Davenport and Four Corners. Help me to have such a passion for them that I am willing to pull over my life just to help them get to the other side. Help me not to have a vision for the church, but create in me a vision for your people.