"He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches."
- Revelations 3:5-6

On Sunday, January 6th, the Tampa Bay Church held its annual workshop to fix our sights for the year 2008. It was an inspiring time of worship, prayer and remembrance.

God has done so much in the Tampa Bay Church. To say that the Tampa Bay Church has “overcome” many challenges in the last few years would be an understatement. We have faced the fires of trial, embraced the discipline of God and are now seeing the harvest of righteousness that God promises to those who are trained by Him.

In the past few years, our Vision Planning Team has prayerfully laid out what we believe to be God’s vision for the Tampa Bay Church. It is a comprehensive plan for the five years leading up to January 1, 2011. We call this our Vision 1.1.11 We have a clear, driving force for our church:

We exist to be a culturally diverse church that shares the life-changing teachings of Jesus through a ministry of house churches throughout the Tampa Bay Area.

It is with the Scriptures as our compass and this driving force in our sails that we set our course for another year of growth in the Tampa Bay Church. Our God is faithful!

We have great plans for 2008 (Download Presentation). We have two primary focuses: Maturity and Worship.

Our focus on Maturity will have two concentrations. The first area of concentration for maturity is our personal spiritual maturity where each disciple rededicates themselves to Jesus and "keep[ing] your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord." We want every disciple in the church to be hot spiritually!

The second area of concentration for maturity is our House Churches. House Churches are the key to our driving force. If the message of Jesus is the "package", our House Churches are the "delivery vehicle." They are our plan to get the good news to our communities. We want our House Churches to be, first and foremost, spiritual family! We want the discipling relationships in those groups to fulfill the "One Another” plan of God for every disciple in the church. We also want them to be the contact point of the church to the world. As our motto states, we are “Small Groups Reaching a Big World.” We will strive to have more evangelistic opportunities in our House Churches so we can bring the family of God to our neighbors.

The theme for the first quarter of 2008 is "Fan Into Flames." The focus of this quarter is going to be the strengthening of our house churches to become "spiritual fires" throughout the Tampa Bay area. As each of us rededicates ourselves to being close to the source of spiritual heat, which is God, and re-devotes ourselves to the relationships in the house churches, we will become sources of spiritual warmth and light to our communities.

Our second primary focus for the church is Worship. We want our times of communal worship to be reverent, awe-filled times of celebration that communicate our gratitude and devotion to the Lord. We will be adding different styles of worship and integrating more people to use their gifts in honoring God. It is going to be an exciting time of growth!

2008 is going to be a great year for the Tampa Bay Church. We have before us so many opportunities to embrace and affect eternity in our lives and in this world. Let’s Fan Into Flames the Holy Spirit in all of us and walk in expectation of the amazing favor of our God!