My wife and I had the opportunity to spend three days at the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta, Georgia this past October. Catalyst is the cutting edge conference for emerging church leaders. It is three days of heart pounding worship, inspiring messages from revolutionary communicators, and tantalizing challenges that cannot be ignored. This is the third year in a row I have been fortunate enough to attend Catalyst, and the most life changing by far!

After sitting through the intensity of the three days, it gets to the point where I think I cannot take anymore, and that is the point when God gives me one of the greatest morsels I needed to hear. "When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near!" Wow! I wrote this quote down and knew it had great significance, but didn't truly understand the impact those words would have on my life until a couple of months later. That is when the word "vision" kept coming up. And it hit me: without vision, the end is near. It is impossible to have vision if my memories exceed my dreams. What God was telling me is that I constantly have to be looking toward the future and not back toward the past. That is not to say that past failures or past successes are to be ignored but they are only building blocks to the future.

Vision is going to be a word we hear alot about at Aldersgate during the month of February. We are going to take a deep look at Aldersgate's vision, mission, and values. Who are we? What are our values? Where are we going? How do we get there?

God has gently reminded me that success breeds complacency and complacency breeds failure. I have been challenged to ask myself everyday: Is what I did yesterday still looking good today? If so, then I haven't done enough today! As Aldersgate takes a closer look at our vision, mission, and values this month, I believe it would be good for us to ask ourselves, "Is what we did yesterday still looking good today?" If so, what are we doing today?

What do you think??