An overview of the vision

"I will honor those who honor me..."
1 Samuel 2:30 (New Living Translation)

It's really very simple...life can be experienced one of two ways.  A) It can be experienced in opposition to God's will.  B) It can be experienced in co-operation with God's will.  People are completely capable of choosing one or the other, and they actually will choose one or the other.  But before a choice is made, a couple of considerations should be made.

If we oppose God, He's going to oppose us.  That means there's going to be frustration, fruitlessness, and futility.  There will always be a strong sense that no matter how hard you try, you're not really getting anywhere or doing anything.  You're living a life that's strikingly similar to the words Solomon scripted so long ago:

As I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless-like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere.
Ecclesiastes 2:11 (New Living Translation)

On the other hand, when we co-operate with God, we're going to experience something quite different.  He's going to honor us as we honor Him and promote us as we promote Him. We're going to experience His favor as opposed to futility.  It's really very simple...if we get in step with what God wants, we're going to see His plans fulfilled in and through our lives.

My purpose in laboring this point is this; Calvary Chapel is a ministry that is completely committed to doing what God wants to do.  We want to be on the same page, same paragraph, and same sentence that He is.  In fact, it's our determined desire to follow His heart word for word, and that word happens to be "discipleship".

We know this because Jesus charged His Church with the responsibility to "make disciples" shortly before He returned to His Father:

Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Matthew 28:19 (New Living Translation)

It's no secret that this verse drives every decision made here at Calvary Chapel and, in my opinion, it's the reason we've seen God move in such a mighty way among us.  Not because we have all the answers when it comes to ministry, but because it's a simple matter of doing the things that have God's heart, and that's discipleship.

So what does discipleship look like?  In many ways it looks just like it did nearly two-thousand years ago when the first few Christians fulfilled this divine directive.  It looks like prayer, it looks like sacrificial serving, it looks like the simple act of sharing what Jesus has done with others, it looks like a consistent commitment to studying the scriptures, it looks like worshiping God in spirit and truth, it looks like coming alongside those who are hurting and in need.  It looks like a lot of things we see captured in God's Word, because the essence of discipleship doesn't change.

But although the essence of discipleship never changes, the means of employing it does.  Culture has changed, expectations have changed, the way people pay attention and process information has changed.  We recognize the need to adapt to these changes in society's atmosphere for the sake of making disciples more effectively, and we're determined to do so.

That's the whole heart behind Until the Whole World Hears.  I can't stress enough that this isn't about raising money for the sake of raising money.  It's about raising the bar in our ability to remain effective disciple-makers in the 21st century.

Whether it's the spiritual seed being sown across our state through REACH FM, the lives being touched in the Bahamas at our All Saints Aids Camp, the global community that regularly receives from The Active Word broadcast ministry, or the people who visit our church and are transformed by the power of the gospel...they all have something in common.  They're all the direct result of what's happening through Until the Whole World Hears.  Again, it's all about discipleship...about reaching people where they are and getting them to where God wants them to be.  That's our heart, because that's His heart; and because it is, we can look forward to future with confidence and assurance that He's for us and with us.

What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us?
Romans 8:31 (New Living Translation)
 
Until the whole world hears,