It was the early 1880s, and the western world was in the second industrial revolution. Railroads connected the eastern U.S. to the western. The west hadn’t been tamed, but the law was coming to the territories. Gunslingers still ruled, the hazardous west, and stories of events like the shootout at the OK Coral, were sent back to the more civilized easterners.
It was in one of the most important ports on the eastern seaboard that a pastor walked the streets of New York City and saw the hordes of immigrants walking off the boats and felt God’s push to reach these masses with the Gospel. But his congregation rejected this move of God, and so, with seven others from his upper middle class congregation, the pastor set out to minister and provide a place where “people of all ethnicities and social classes” could come together as Christ’s Church (https://cmalliance.org/who-we-are/our-story/).
This is the beginning of what the Christian and Missionary Alliance is today. The ministry that we are a part of began with the vision that God gave to A.B. Simpson and those seven children of God to reach the unreached people of New York. Since then, the worldwide Alliance family spans six million believers, in over 25,000 churches, speaking over 180 languages and dialects. And it seeks to reach those who have never heard the Gospel.
This movement of God only happened, because the people of God followed the vision of God.
Proverbs 29:18 states, “Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.”
This verse lands in the middle of a passage on discipline within the book of Proverbs, hinting at the connection between the vision of God and the obedience of God’s people; which is something we can see throughout Scripture.
In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, we see how God lays out vision time after time for people, and their response to that vision.
In Genesis 1:28, God lays out the vision he has for humans as a whole. We read, “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” God’s vision for humanity was to be caretakers and explores of this new world he had created.
Five chapters later in Genesis 6, we find out that, not only did humans fail in achieving God’s vision, the humans become so corrupt, that God has to bring judgment upon everything. Yet, God sees one man that still seeks him, so God gives vision to Noah, Genesis 6:14, which reads, “Make yourself an ark of gopher wood. Make rooms in the ark, and cover it inside and out with pitch.” God’s vision was that ark would hold the animals and people that would repopulate the land, so giving his original vision another opportunity.
But sin will continue and God’s plan to bring about the path to salvation for humanity, would be started with Abraham in chapter 12 of Genesis, where God states, beginning in verse 1, “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’” God’s vision for Abraham would lead to the nation of Israel. It would lead to the events in Egypt, to the conquering of Canaan, to the time of the Judges, the monarchy of David, the exile and return to the land. And at each step God would give a vision on how that step should be done.
But the vision of God for the path of salvation was never the nation of Israel solely. It was through one individual that God’s vision to Abraham would come to its flourishing. To a man named Jospeh we read in the Gospel of Matthew 1:21, of how an angel comes to him in a dream in saying of his betrothed wife, “She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” God gives Jospeh the vision of his plan for the pathway of salvation, and it will be through his adopted son, born from his virgin wife.
And Jesus would give the vision for his work, when he stated this in Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
It was after his death and resurrection, which opened the pathway to God’s salvation, that Jesus then gave his people, his Church, the vision in which they were to walk. In Matthew 28:19 we begin to read, “19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” And in Acts 1:8, Jesus states, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
And it’s in Jesus’ vision for the Church that we find ourselves today.
It’s the late 1970s in a small rock town in western Arizona. Quartzsite is the rockhound’s destination. It’s a cheap place to live in the winter and a lot warmer than those northern states, so people flood the sleepy town for six months out of the year. People say the population grows from a few thousand to over a million. It becomes known as the Rock and RV capital, and the biggest flea market in the world.
Retirees flock to the town, and to support them, young families begin to arrive in droves. As they do, those who are Christians begin to congregate at the only church in town. On an average Sunday in the winter, over 500 people can be found attending this small desert church. But as we have seen throughout the history of God’s vision and humanity’s sin, a falling away from that vision occurs.
Conflict over what to do with the children erupts and some of the young families leave the congregation and begin to meet together for a Bible study. This Bible study grows, and in the early 80s a congregation begins to meet for worship. One of the founders of the Bible study gives the fledgling ministry his home and it’s transformed into a meeting place. The focus of this new ministry is to reach and give a place for the young families of Quartzsite and their children to fellowship together. Then in 1984, the ministry enters into partnership with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, partly due to a chance meeting between that same founder, and a future pastor of the church.
It was then that the Quartzsite Alliance Church was launched. Today, we sit in the aftermath of that early group, like the those eight who began the Alliance so long ago, who saw the vision that God had, and began to walk as he led.
None of this to say that the Alliance has the monopoly on God’s vision, nor to say that it is the only church in town who is doing the work of God. God gives his people vision, and when they walk in that vision, God brings about his great work, and his people experience mighty things as he achieves them.
It’s God’s vision that we must continually be connected to, because if we are not, as the writer of Proverbs says, we loose restraint, or as the King James puts it, “Where there is no vision, the people perish…”
Why do so many local churches fail? Why do both large and small ministries fall to scandals and abuse? It’s from a move away from the vision that God sets out for both the group and the individual.
God’s vision is what gives us reason to move forward in his work, and it’s our turning away from his vision that leads to destruction. It’s why knowing what God has set before us to accomplish is so important. For us as the Alliance Church in Quartzsite that means we have a job to reach the young families and their children in our town. That is our primary ministry and if we move beyond that without holding that at our core, we will be moving away from the vision that God set out for us. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t have more for us, but we cannot move away from that core vision or this ministry will perish.
But it’s not just the vision of the Church in the spreading of the Gospel or of a single ministry like ours here, that we must not move away from. As individuals God has give us his vision as well. In Paul’s great theological work in the book of Romans, and in the middle of talking about the great work of the Spirit and great love of God for his people, Paul pens these words in Romans 8:29, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
Each of us are to seek after the work of God in our own lives, that we might be ever increasingly conformed to the image of Jesus. These are the fruits that Jesus spoke about in places like John 15:5, when he tells us, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” And these fruit are what Paul mentions in Galatians 5:22-25, “22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.”
This is where God desires his people and his Church as a whole to be, in his vision. For the Church, it is to bring the Gospel to the world, and each individual ministry is given a vision to achieve this purpose. For the individual, God’s vision is to conform to the image of Jesus and produce the fruit of the Spirit in every increasing ways.
As we march forward into this 40 years of celebration of what God has done through this particular ministry, we must abide in the vision of God that we may be a people who do not perish, but grow and flourish.
My challenge this week is to take the three visions that we’ve talked about today and between you and God, ask the question, “am I fulfilling my part in the vision?” Are you engaged in God’s work of sharing the Gospel in word and deed? Are you engaging in a local ministry vision, ours or another one that God has placed you in? Are you engaging in God’s vision for you to be continually conformed to Jesus, producing his fruit in your life? Wrestle with these visions this week.
Let us be a people who are moving forward in our relationship with God, because we are found in the vision of God. Amen.
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