Vision Sunday

Call to Worship

To all who are weary and in need of rest

To all who are mourning and longing for comfort

To all who fail and desire strength

To all who sin and need a Savior

We, Moraga Valley Presbyterian Church, open wide our arms

With a welcome from Jesus Christ.

He is the ally to the guilty and failing

He is the comfort to those who are mourning

He is the joy of our hearts

And He is the friend of sinners

So Come, worship Him with us.

Sermon

Good morning! My name is Brandon Morrow and I get to serve as one of the Pastors here at Moraga Valley and this morning I want to invite you into a different kind of time that we’ll do annually here at Moraga Valley, what we’re calling Vision Sunday, and opportunity to take a peek into where we feel like God is calling us to lean into as a church.

These will be Sunday’s of hope, of a future, — and they’ll be Sunday’s of challenge and faith.

These Sunday’s will shape us as a church. They are stops and starts of us continually becoming new creatures in Christ: stopping the old, and in faith, starting the new thing that God might use us to do.

I want to begin this Vision Sunday with a story, and it’s a story from my own life, and how we came to serve at Moraga Valley.

It was probably early 2022, and I had felt a stirring in my heart that God might be calling us to trust Him even more than we did… which felt like a lot, we had led pretty comfortable lives and we had seen God do amazing work in a church that became two locations, and we had seen hundreds come to faith, and this church was making a real impact in a region in Northwest Iowa.

Erica and I have been together for long enough to know that these “stirrings” usually end up in moving really, really far away — and push us out of our comfort zone.

We were at a point where we could do really faithful ministry for the next 20 years and raise our three boys and put down relational roots in a familiar Midwest with no earthquakes or traffic jams through a tunnel in the side of the hill.

And yet… a stirring… a stirring that God was calling us into an even greater season of trust.

Here’s the short of it… at some point as we neared the summer, I said to Erica, “what if God is calling us to California?” And I’m pretty sure she laughed and said something like, “God might be calling you to California, but you’ll have to go alone.” She ended that statement with a prompt response, “I’m never moving to California.”

Those were the famous last words of my wife, and a reminder that God has a sense of humor.

But it opened up a whole new season of vision for us… what could God do in the Bay Area? How was He not done with Moraga Valley?

And from Day One, you captured our hearts… you won the affection of our children, and all we could see at the top of this hill, was limitless potential for the Kingdom of God.

God, in His mercy, has brought together the most unbelievable church in the world. We are diverse in age, growing in diversity in ethnicity, and we sit facing the two most influential regions of our state:

The San Francisco Bay area to my right, and Sacramento to my left.

He has placed us — a church of influence and resources, at top of a hill, in a sleepy little town where it’s safe to grow old and it’s safe to raise children — not to be sleepy Christians, not to play it safe, not to preside over Lamorinda with a rigid Spirit — but as stewards… God has called us to serve these people with the hope and truth of Jesus so that He might heal all who live within the reach of its ministry, so that we might influence the nations, so that we might contribute to the welfare of our neighbors, so that — all might Jesus Christ as Lord.

What we saw as endless potential, God sees as endless potential of this church… and through a season of strategy, our Elders believe in the endless potential of this church.

We believe that God is calling us to live into that… to trust in His Spirit-led, transformative work.

This morning, I’ve given you a little glimpse of what Erica and I saw, but I want to give you a vision of what our Elders see as we move forward over the next 2-3 years of faithfulness to Jesus.

Our Vision at Moraga Valley Presbyterian Church is that we see a praying, celebrating, gathered, faithful, outward-reaching, multigenerational church community that surrenders all of life to making disciples for the glory of Jesus Christ in our changing world.

We believe that God is calling us to reach the next generation of Lamorinda and the East Bay, and that as we take a step in that direction, God is calling us to see a version of ourselves that with His help, we will see the fruit of.

Let me walk you through some of the characteristics of the church that we see MVPC becoming:

We see a church that will be undergirded by the supernatural efforts of a praying people, not in our supernatural ability, but in God’s supernatural capability.

We see a church that is honoring and celebrating those whom God has made in His own image, that Christ Jesus has died to redeem. We believe joy is a marker of a movement of the Kingdom of God.

We see a gathered people — who make the conscious decision to meet together because Jesus is Lord over them all. This is a gathered people that will be strengthened and equipped for a future with Jesus.

We see a faithful church, intent on not succeeding by wordly standards, but by increasing in faith and obedience to Jesus.

We see a church that is outward-reaching, knowing that the difference between an outward-facing and outward-reaching perspective on Jesus is that Jesus does not just look at us, but He pursues a relationship with the children of God. We believe that with God’s help we can be a church for our community in our community.

We see a multigenerational church, because we know that it will require every generation to reach the next generation. We will be a church that celebrates the priesthood of all believers, and not just the priesthood of some believers. God has called every person at Moraga Valley to contribute, from our oldest member to our youngest member.

And to be this church we have to be faithful in accomplishing the mission of the church: surrendering all of life to making disciples for the glory of Jesus Christ in our changing rules.

Teresa of Avila was once quoted with saying, “You pay God a compliment by asking great things of Him.”

What the vision of our church is, is a major compliment to God; a request for Jesus to be non-ignorable in Lamorinda.

As we step into a new season of Vision, we see three major areas of increased trust that God is inviting us to step into… and we’ve identified them as our Three Priorities.

Belong (Read Only) - Create entry points for people to become a part of the family of God.

Transform (Read Only) - Help people grow as disciples.

Engage (Read Only) - Multiplying our impact in Lamorinda and Beyond.

Our Three Priorities help:

Create entry points for people to join the family of God.

People grow as they follow Jesus.

Multiply our impact in Lamorinda and Beyond.

These priorities help create pillars or a kind of landmark for us as we go forward…