Thirty years from now, this church will have directly or indirectly improved the lives of thousands through the sharing of the good news and rational truths of the Lord’s Second Coming, and by providing ways for people to grow in understanding and love and usefulness, individually and as part of a larger spiritual community.
Locally, the people who worship at this church will have the reputation among their neighbors as being a friendly, service-oriented community that would be sorely missed if it were to some day disappear. Through great preaching, effective service programs and a strong network of small groups, lives will be regularly transformed by the healing teachings of the New Church and by means of the loving followers of the Lord God Jesus Christ as He reveals Himself in His Second Coming.
We will have grown and thrived and reproduced, having not only daughter churches, but also granddaughter and great granddaughter churches, including several additional congregations in the greater Austin area, congregations in other parts of the country in places like New York, Florida and California, and congregations in other countries in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. Not every church launch will have been a success, but with a willingness to learn from mistakes and a faith in the Lord’s desire to see His kingdom more fully established on earth, we will have directly or indirectly launched 20 viable, self-sufficient congregations, each with at least one hundred and fifty members.
The main campus of the original Austin congregation will have become a center for church launch training, working in partnership with the Academy of the New Church Theological School to prepare ministers and other church launch personnel to continue the work of creating new venues for sharing the good news of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. By this time, the Austin church launching model will have evolved through trial, error, prayer and repentance to be the main church launch model used by the New Church worldwide.
[This is a description of what I visualize when I imagine the distant future impact of following the Launch Plan for a New Church presence in Austin. This flows from the Aspirational Goal posted yesterday. Tomorrow: An overview of the plan’s Rationale.]