There is something almost audacious about a vision statement. It dares to say: this is where we are going. This is who we are called to become. It plants a flag not in the ground of what has been, but in the horizon of what could be.
This past year, The United Methodist Church adopted a new vision statement — one that was reflected on and celebrated at our Annual Conference. It reads:
The United Methodist Church forms disciples of Jesus Christ who, empowered by the Holy Spirit, love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously in local communities and worldwide connections.
Read that again. Slowly. Because those are not bureaucratic words. Those are fighting words. Gospel words. Words that assume the Church has somewhere to go and something to do when it gets there.
Love Boldly
The first movement of this vision is love — but not a polite, carefully-managed kind of love. Bold love. Passionate love. The kind Jesus modeled when he crossed every boundary that religion and culture had erected and embraced people who had been told they were too far gone, too far outside, too far from the table.
In Matthew 22, when Jesus is asked to name the greatest commandment, he doesn’t hesitate: love God with everything you have, and love your neighbor as yourself. And in John 13, on the night of his arrest, he says it again — love one another as I have loved you. That’s the standard. Not niceness. Not tolerance. Not charitable feelings from a comfortable distance. Love as Jesus loved. Bold, boundary-crossing, self-giving love.
This vision calls us to love people of every age, nation, race, gender, and walk of life — not as an asterisk at the bottom of our welcome, but as the headline. That is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.
Serve Joyfully
The second movement surprises me every time I read it. Not just “serve” — but serve joyfully. There is something deeply countercultural about that pairing. We live in a world that treats service as a burden — something you do out of guilt or obligation or civic duty. But the psalmist says, serve the Lord with gladness (Psalm 100:2). Nehemiah reminds a weary people that the joy of the Lord is their strength (Nehemiah 8:10).
Joy, in this sense, is not the same as happiness. Joy is what sustains you when the work is hard and the results are slow and the need is greater than your capacity. Joy is what keeps you from burning out or giving up. Joy is the deep-down conviction that what you are doing matters — that God is in it, and that is enough.
This vision calls us to journey alongside the most vulnerable — not to fix them from above, but to walk with them, offering care and compassion from beside them. That is the posture of Jesus in John 13, kneeling with a towel and a basin, washing feet that did not deserve it. That is the posture we are called to embody.
Lead Courageously
The third movement is the one that demands the most of us. Because the vision does not say “lead comfortably” or “lead carefully” or “lead when it is convenient.” It says lead courageously — following Jesus’ example by resisting and dismantling systems of evil, injustice, and oppression, striving for peace, justice, and reconciliation.
God said to Joshua, on the edge of a land he had never entered with a task that seemed too large, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9). That promise has not expired. It still speaks to a church standing at the edge of its own uncertain horizon.
Courageous leadership does not mean reckless leadership. It means a willingness to name what needs to be named, to go where justice calls even when it is uncomfortable, and to trust that the God who sends us goes with us.
Bishop Tracy Smith Malone, President of the Council of Bishops, put it this way: “This new vision is not simply a statement or a plan — it is a catalyst for transformation. It is a vision that will help the Church embrace the opportunities before us, to follow where God is leading us, and to more fully engage in our mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”
I want to sit with that word — catalyst. A catalyst does not create energy out of nothing. It releases energy that was already there, waiting for the right conditions to ignite. That is what a vision like this can do for a congregation like ours.
We have been loving people in this community for a long time. We have been serving — through food pantries and preschools, crisis ministries and quiet acts of mercy that never make it into any newsletter. We have been leading — sometimes imperfectly, always forward. This vision does not ask us to start over. It asks us to see what we are already doing through a clearer lens. To name it. To claim it. To do it more intentionally and more boldly.
So here is my question for us this July, as the summer stretches out and the pace slows just enough to think:
Where is God calling Elkin First to love more boldly?
Where might we serve with more joy — and less duty?
What courageous step is ours to take, even if we cannot yet see where it leads?
A vision is only as real as the people who decide to live it. We are those people. This is our moment.
Thanks be to God — who is not finished with us yet.
Grace and peace,
Dr. Kaury
