What is important?

Our church, I may have mentioned, is working on discerning and implementing God's vision for who and what we are to be as a church, so I've been thinking alot about that lately.

I'm struck by the idea that the vision that we have discerns as a committee is very much in line with the biblical teachings of what a church should be and do. I've been wondering if a vision isn't just God giving us a glimpse of what our future could be, but if it is also meant to be God's means of opening our eyes to what he has been trying to communicate to us as our purpose since we began as a church.

I've started John Ortberg's new book, "When the Game is Over It All Goes Back in the Box." I haven't read much of it, but the quote on page one, at the beginning of chapter one, struck me:

This is our predicament.
Over and over again, we lose sight of
what is important, and what isn't.
-- Epictetus

What is important? What is our priority as a person, as a church, as a denomination? I think we do lose sight of it, and that God must continually remind us of it.

And perhaps that is our job as we attempt to implement a vision statement in a church. I also picked up Andy Stanley's book, "Making Vision Stick." I haven't read much of it, either, but at the very beginning, he says almost exactly the same thing. In order for a church to keep sight of its vision, it must be constantly reminded of what is important.