Vision 2008 Part 2

Real Life is a Purpose Driven church. Many people don't quite get the concept of Purpose Driven and they think that it's all about a style but that isn't it at all. Purpose Driven is all about knowing your target or who you are called to reach and knowing your mission and how you are going to complete it. For us, we are called to do four things.

Real Life is called to:

1. Bring people into membership in God's family.
2. Build hurting people up.
3. Train people up for service to God and others.
4. Send out for service.

Being Purpose Driven means that we channel our decisions through the mission. If something doesn't help us meet one of the things we are called to do we aren't going to do it. It is that simple. Honestly, it helps make some choices much easier to make. When you know what you are called to do, it's much easier to say yes, and much easier when necessary, to say no. Being a church that does things one purpose helps us become more effective because we are able to focus our attention and energies into the areas that matter the most to our mission. We don't have to waste time, energy, and resources on things that don't help us complete the mission.

Being Purpose Driven also means that we budget for our purpose. We will continually look at our budget and ask ourselves how does our spending help meet our purpose. If a program or ministry is no longer meeting our purpose we will eliminate it. Purpose Driven budgeting also means that we are going to fund the things that are important to us.

As a small upstart church one of the big selling points we have is that we really have a killer kids ministry. Why is that? We put our money where our mouth is. It would be hypocritical for us to say we care about kids and not fully and completely fund that ministry. In most churches, kids get the short end of the financial stick. We fund other ministries but we give kids the scraps. That will never happen at Real Life as long as I am in charge.

Why are kids so important that we spend thousands of dollars yearly on them? Simple, most people that come to Christ come before the age of 18. A full 47% of conversions happen before the age of 12. Children's ministry is our biggest mission field. I will say that I don't know much about kids ministry. It's really not my passion. But, I know enough to make sure that our kids have everything they need.