A vision for our church and for the Baptist General Conference and for the Church of Jesus Christ in general.

A vision of the church as a group of people who are sojourners, aliens, exiles, refugees in this world to

use some New Testament words to describe them.

A happy, peaceful, loving people who confess allegiance to a foreign

king, Jesus Christ and him only.

A people who reside in every nation in the world,

but whose all determining citizenship is in heaven.

From where we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

I have a vision of a church as the freest of all peoples.

Free from guilt and free from greed and free from fear because our kingdom cannot be shaken, as Hebrew says.

The city for which we hope has God for its builder and its maker whose father land is heaven and heaven only.

I see the church as a free people because our minds are not conformed to this age but are being transformed by the mercies of God so that we are not enslaved to fashion and fad or any other form of covertiousness.

I have a vision of the church as a people with strong desires, not shaped by the persuaders of this world, but shaped

by messages coming from the Fatherland.

Oh for a church with a single radical allegiance to the one king who said my kingdom is not of this world.

I think one of the great crucial issues before the church in this country and around the world today

is, shall we here be American with a pinch of religious flavoring or shall we be Christ's people with a pinch of American flavoring?

And I think that's a crucial question for the church in our land today because there

are a lot of people who have not seriously asked themselves this question,

am I more American than I am Christian.

I'm not too worried about people who are seriously asking themselves that question and struggling with that dilemma.

But there are a lot who haven't.

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