God laid on my heart years ago to give the church a 2020 vision.  This is not a new concept as Acts 20:20 has been used over the years as a statement of purpose and vision (“You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house.”)  But in that the year 2020 was 20 years away at the time, it became a target year for us to point to.  But it was a challenge to ourselves to not settle into a comfort zone that would necessarily make us look and feel good.  It was a challenge for us to take risks and to push the church out into the communities where it could be most effective in reaching truly lost people rather than simply bloating itself through the recruitment of those “Christians” around us who have heard the gospel hundreds of times over.  We challenged ourselves to plant 50 churches (and quasi church ministries) in 20 years.  Now, we admitted at the time that building simply one effective church was enough for us, but that we ought to at least “have it in our heart” to do something extraordinary for God.

This is why we are planting a Wylie church. This is why we stepped out and began Mission church in Plano several years back (We remerged the churches due to declines at Northeast).  Many of us were convinced many years ago that Henry Blackaby, writing in his landmark workbook, “Experiencing God”, was right in saying we should look for where God is already working and go join him in it, rather than contriving our own “deal” and then asking him to bless it.  The former glorifies and serves him; the latter can tend to glorify and serve us as we are tempted to build our own “tower to heaven to make a name for ourselves”.

Surely God inspired a group of disciples to maintain our current facility at 318 N. Shiloh Road in Garland, Texas as a place for his people to meet and work.  Part of that group joined Northeast upon on the dissolution of the Walnut Village Church.  They deeded the church to us.  We have not only maintained the facility, but we have sought to judiciously and modestly update and improve the facility (Well granted, the “5-Star Men’s Room” isn’t necessarily modest, but that was a sacrifice of a couple of dedicated deacons, costing the church very little).  But our property should be a springboard not an anchor.  Our hope in Christ is our only anchor (Heb. 6:19), and we put no hope in anything of this world, including property, places, comfort and a sense of security.

I believe it was God that led some of us to live in WyIie and who led several families from Wylie to Northeast.  I believe Wylie is where is working through our church, and therefore that is why we should “join” him there.  I am starting to believe God may be building the foundation for us to plant a university church near UTD in the future.  I feel God may be putting the pieces in place to begin a university outreach near the UNT.  These kinds of campus churches can, by what our present experiences demonstrates, become veritable “leader factories”, tapping into the life blood of societies’ future leadership—our colleges.  But all of this will require risks.  And, with humans involved there is never a promise of mistakes not being made.  They most assuredly will be.

As with the present American church model, if we only seek to maintain and grow what we now have at Northeast, as blessed as it is, if we are tied to a building and a location and a way of doing things already established, we face defeat in our mission before we even begin.  We will be shackled by our own lack of faith and perhaps even our own selfishness.  Yes, we must be wise.  Yes, we must be Spirit-led.  Yes, we must resist being hasty and falling prey to the desires for human conquest.  But, our call has always been to go make disciples, not to go build individual congregations, including our present one, that expect to function as the modern corporation does with “perpetuity”.
May the proverb not be demonstrated in us that, “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed…”