To liberate Greater Richmond with the transforming power of the Gospel, beginning with us.

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SPC 2012 – A Vision for Stony Point Church’s Future

In 1519 the conquistador, Hernan Cortes, reached Mexico.  He wasn’t a good man; someone once described him kindly as a ‘gentlemanly pirate’.  But he had an audacious dream.  He had heard of the city of gold and was willing to overcome the entire Aztec empire to conquer it.  So, with 400 men, 15 horses and a few cannon, Cortes landed his ships at the port of Tabasco and then proceeded to scuttle them: knowing that as he said he had left his men with ‘nothing to rely on save their own hands – and the certainty that they must either win the land or die in the attempt.’  So Cortes a year later took Tenochtitlan and the empire that had built it.

It seems to us that our dreams must be no less audacious and the steps we are willing to take to commit ourselves to them must be no less resolute nor risk-taking than Cortes’s.  How could Cortes overcome an empire with less men than would have populated one of its villages – because (among other reasons) he and his men had a big dream and no opportunity to retreat from pursuing it. So here – under the standard of afar better conqueror, a far worthier goal than gold and much greater resources (if we will lay hold of them) than 15 horses and a few cannon – is an audacious dream for where God has put us.

Our express purpose, we wrote two years ago, ‘is to offer the people of Richmond the hope of the gospel, which in Christ will transform their lives to God’s glory.’  Let us suggest, on reflection -if that is our purpose it will not cost us nor motivate us to risk or to change or to do anything other than maintain an even keel and survive.  Any store can offer people something but Christ calls us to step out in faith and claim enemy territory, depending upon him and using all the resources and gifts He gives us.  After all, what did he say to Peter? (The Message in Matthew 16:16-18 puts it best):

Simon Peter said, “You’re the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  Jesus came back, “God bless you, Simon, son of Jonah! You didn’t get that answer out of books or from teachers. My Father in heaven, God himself, let you in on this secret of who I really am. And now I’m going to tell you who you are, really are. You are Peter, a rock. This is the rock on which I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out.

What is a suitably big vision for such a Gospel but to conquer Richmond again with the Gospel – to see our broken, divided, self-sufficient and sinful community won again for Christ?! Cortes conquered an empire of 8 million with 400 tired, disorderly and some diseased troops.  We face a Richmond which has historically known the Gospel – “our city of churches” has been transformed by the Gospel before – from its settling, to its growth in the boom years of the Tobacco trade, to Lee’s return to his smoldering city in 1865, reconstruction and beyond.  We believe intellectually that the Gospel (which is changing us) can change anyone anywhere – but do we believe that for our city and our immediate community?  It is a big vision, the recapturing of an entire city – it is not something we can do without the great God on whom we depend and on our whole-hearted and risking willingness to follow Him where he might lead us.

So, here are seven characteristics of the Stony Point Church we think God wants us to be serving in just five years:

• A Stony Point Church where no one in the church or outside it has any doubts as to what we are about: Gospel transformation. The priority will be grasping and applying the transforming gospel of the Cross – that will be the engine of change and the mark of who we are – (not a community based on its history, nor on core families, nor on a family feel, nor on being a bastion of Reformed theology) – but a Church where everyone sees that job one for everyone from the guy who wanders in on Sunday morning to our children, to our leaders – the chief distinguishing mark will be how the Gospel has drawn them, changed and is changing them. We want every new member of that 2012 church to be able to articulate the tenets of ‘Living in the Light’ and be growing in a Sonship model of who they are in Christ. Achieving this singularity of on-point message aside from all the little things that Stony Point Church has been about over the years is vital, we think, to our future. So, first, a singular focus and engine of transformation.

• A Stony Point Church which sees its main legacy as growing leaders. In all that we do in this Stony Point of 2012, we will be asking ourselves how are we investing in growing leadership here?  It will be natural for us to ask not how can we maintain the Christian faith in these people but how can we grow it?  How do our programs grow people to take leadership as mature, discipled and discipling members of Christ’s church? What men and women can we invest in?  What structures can we grow and refine and eliminate so that we will be better at growing a culture of leadership?  How does our teaching invest in leadership development – does it simply tell our people about the Bible or does it grow adults and children who can apply Bible teaching and live transformed, leading lives for Christ? Second, a Stony Point Church with a clear culture of investment in leadership.

• A Stony Point Church which returns to its roots as a cooperating partner in church planting.  This Stony Point Church, we would argue, without apology will be focused not exclusively but primarily on the task of mission to Greater Richmond.  Such other mission ventures as we are involved we hope will be ones that teach us better how to reach our city.  We will see our task as serving the Lord of the Church in building the Church in Richmond.  We will stress partnership with our brothers in the new Metro Richmond Presbytery but will work with other gospel churches and other gospel works in seeing Richmond transformed in a multitude of ways and our missions budget will reflect it. Stony Point cooperated in the hiring of the first full-time church planting intern and then a church planter for the first of five city churches – the first assuming the pastorate of Franklin Street PCA. Third, a Stony Point Church with a clear bias to cooperating local mission.

• A Stony Point Church which will glorify the God of the Gospel by intentionally drawing both believers and unbelievers to Christian worship and decoding the Gospel for them. Keller’s model will be more seriously our objective.  We will have a church culture which delights in excellence in how we present ourselves on Sunday mornings – in a clear but unpredictable, creative and gift-harnessing service of worship where we will affirm with Newbigin that we must ‘renounce an introverted concern for [our] own life and recognize that [we] exist for the sake of those who are not members.’  We must be intentional about creating an environment on Sunday mornings which people who are not yet Christians will be drawn to. Our music ministry, the complexity and planning level of such a service will mean the Stony Point of 2012 has a paid music director working in conjunction with an associate pastor who as administrator directs and plans our programs as a whole. Fourth, a surprisingly worshipful Stony Point Church.

• A Stony Point Church which effectively gathers and disciples those God sends to her. Long before 2012, the Session understood the priority of setting aside a pastor to spend all his time on overseeing and developing the assimilation and discipleship vehicles of the church.  Five years ago although very friendly on Sunday mornings, we had little plan for being practically hospitable.  People wouldn’t know how to get “into” the church.  The Session saw assimilation and discipleship as such key priorities that they not only hired a new pastor but made it a central expectation of membership that members would be involved and growing in some form of small group for learning, intercession, accountability, connection and growth.  The Session also saw that they could not form such a system under their own direct care so they carefully crafted an accountable but delegated group of ordained under-shepherds to lead such groups in the church. Fifth, an assimilating, discipling Stony Point Church under a delegating leadership.

• A Stony Point Church which chooses in faith to construct a building suitable to not only its own needs but the needs of those who may come.  In other words, the church building of the Stony Point in 2012 with a new sanctuary at last under construction is – while not opulent – more worshipful (in its quality) and less utilitarian and apparently temporary in its design than the Stony Point of five years before.  The new sanctuary (among other projects) was not of course cheap but the Session leading in faith and at some risk raised the money necessary and was amazed at what God could do. Sixth, a newly renovated Stony Point Church with a new sanctuary.

• A Stony Point Church which whatever else it does – is characterized by practical mercy to the poor.  Although Bon Air is by no means characterized by poverty – far from it – the Church has the opportunity to project a new form of humanitarianism in Christ.  The Stony Point Church of 2012 will reflect not what the world is, but in the Gospel what it should be – a diverse congregation racially and socially bonded together in service– reaching out to those in need in all kinds of ways from ESL programs to car repair ministry. Seventh, a Stony Point Church increasingly rich in mercy.

SPC Session 2007.