Looking Forward

“The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”
—Proverbs 16:9

“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”
—Psalm 127:1a

The clear teaching of these verses is the Lord’s absolute sovereignty over the outcome of our plans. The clear implication of them is that we should still make plans. Humbly, we seek biblical counsel, set our goals, and pray, “establish the work of our hands!” (Psalm 90:17)

In 2022, Faith Bible Church’s elders kicked off a five-year strategic plan, with churchwide initiatives as well as goals within each area of ministry. Some of these have worked out better than planned. Some have taken unexpected turns.

Since then, it has also become more difficult to see anything five years ahead, lead pastor Dan Jarms says. That’s why the elders are using a new long-term strategic planning approach starting this fiscal year (September 2026 through August 2027). Moving forward, strategic plans will be made on a shorter cycle.

Core values

Over the past few months there have also been other updates to the church’s big-picture communications. Those include Faith’s core values. While the values themselves are as unchanging as the Scriptures they’re based on, we’re streamlining the way we articulate them in our communications, including the website, digital and printed resources, and announcements in services. (Note: Updating the doctrinal statement is a separate, ongoing process.)

The “About” page on our website previously contained a list of “Values” and a list of “Distinctives.” It was a straightforward, thorough, and robust description of Faith’s strengths and aspirations. The only thing wrong with it was it was too long and weighty to be remembered, repeated, and used by the elders, let alone church members in general. The lists contained more than 1,000 words in total.

By simplifying the articulation of our core values, the elders and pastors hope to make these concepts more useful for leaders and members to understand, remember, and communicate what we’re all about as a church.

Stan Campbell helped lead the elders through discussions to clarify the most important character traits of Faith Bible Church. After many, many conversations about boiling down and simplifying, the following core values emerged:

• A loving community. As redeemed saints, we worship Jesus Christ with everything we think, say, and do. He made us one body and taught us, by word and example, to love one another. So, just as He laid down His life to redeem us into God’s family, we sacrificially love and serve one another, strive for unity, invite outsiders into the family, and give generously of what He has given us.
• Multi-generational discipleship. Our leaders, our facilities, and our members are devoted to evangelizing and raising up the next generation of Christ followers. We gather for worship, prayer, fellowship, and learning from the Bible, which is authoritative and sufficient to teach us how to repent from sin and live lives that are pleasing to God. With Christ as our Head and empowered by the Spirit of God, we are all being transformed into Christ’s image as older saints teach younger ones who God is, what He has done, and how to do His will in all stages and spheres of life.
• Training and sending. In obedience to Christ’s command, we joyfully prepare and send people and resources to further the work of making disciples from every people and tongue on the earth. We generously invest in training leaders and partners to plant and build up Bible-teaching, Christ-exalting local churches both in our region and around the globe.

While there is no way for a few words to express fully our great hope in Christ, these core values inform and reflect how we live and worship together on an ongoing basis.

By God’s grace, these values also drive us to set big goals that require multi-year, coordinated efforts. In addition to ongoing goals in the specific ministries of Faith, the new strategic plan includes three churchwide initiatives for the next three years and beyond. Each initiative is strongly rooted in one of the three core values.

• Our value for a loving community drives us to “excel still more” in connecting people to one another and to Christ, especially newcomers to the faith and to our church.
• Our value for multi-generational discipleship drives us to update and refine our facility to serve ongoing discipleship activities such as Growth Groups, Children’s Ministry, and equipping classes.
• Our value for training and sending drives us to give our people and resources to plant healthy, Christ-exalting churches in our region.

Churchwide Initiatives

Pathways to Connection

Goal: Connect people, new and established, and disciple them to grow to maturity in Christ.

Priorities: Clarify simple steps for quickly building relationships within the church. Evangelize unsaved visitors. Strengthen attendees’ faith in Jesus and commitment to the local church through membership.

Actions: Provide tools for current members to come alongside newcomers. Build up the Connect Team, established members trained to guide newcomers. Track newcomer interactions to ensure follow-up and meaningful connection.

To be a loving community, we need to be welcoming, hospitable, and helpful to people who come to our church. Part of that is being strategic and unified in how we connect with newcomers, concerned primarily for their relationship with Jesus and helping them make connections in the church body that will nurture that relationship. Ultimately, pointing people to Christ will also move them toward baptism and membership – either at Faith or another church that is a better fit for them.

While our structured membership process may seem unspiritual or bureaucratic, it’s important for many reasons. First, the membership class and elder interview seek to ascertain the most important thing: that a person actually knows Jesus. Discipleship pastor Nathan Thiry says that through the formal interview, “the elders are evaluating your testimony, your understanding of the gospel. We’re making sure that you’re clear on Jesus and you have a relationship with Him. We’re giving our affirmation of that as far as we can see.”

By becoming a Faith member, a person also commits to the relationships and functions the Bible assigns to believers within churches – for their own good as well as the church’s. Many who seek the benefits of authentic community still need to learn about the responsibilities of it. “A member agrees to be shepherded,” Dan says. “They agree to serve somewhere. They agree to be in community.”

Faith is already a hospitable, welcoming church, so this initiative won’t change the essentials of how we reach out to others any given Sunday. But we’re setting up ways to track contacts with newcomers, prevent them falling through administrative cracks, and train members on how to guide others to draw near to Jesus.

Campus Stewardship

Goal: Adapt Faith’s building and grounds to effectively facilitate the “one-anothers,” connections, and discipleship.

Priorities: Expand Foyer and children’s spaces to accommodate connections and reduce “traffic congestion” on Sundays. Transform underutilized areas of the campus to be more suited for ministry goals.

Actions: Complete a campus pre-design study, create a Master Plan, and communicate the associated costs.

Depending on where you serve in ministry, this could seem like the most mundane or the most exciting of the initiatives. As we aim for multigenerational discipleship, our building is a huge component in how God makes it possible. Functional meeting rooms and bathrooms, heating/cooling, and security systems can be taken for granted until they aren’t working.

The capital campaign over 2024-2026 helped grab some low-hanging fruit and draw attention to the importance of stewarding our facilities well. Right now, one of those exciting projects is nearing completion, with new bathrooms, kitchenette, and meeting rooms upstairs.

We want to have a sound plan in place before we make further changes to facilities. That includes consulting with experts conducting a pre-design study of how we could use our space better. From that study, we will create and refine a long-term Master Plan that will guide the specifics of projects and costs.

God has brought members to Faith who are gifted in this area to help the elders be informed about the options. Master planning deacon Jim Moeller has been an excellent consultant to help operations director Mark Frankian get the process going. The pre-design study is under way. Lord willing, the Master Plan will inform our direction over a lot more than three years and will serve us well as we use our campus to disciple the coming generations.

Church Planting

Goal: Proclaim Christ locally by planting a healthy church or revitalizing a church by 2030.

Priorities: Raise up a pastor and a mature core group who are gifted and called to plant a church in our region. Devote the necessary financial resources to prepare well and give it time to become self-supporting.

Actions: Create a planning team and pursue cooperation with other churches, including the Inland Northwest Cooperative. Identify a geographical area with the greatest need for a healthy church.

This is the most easily measured goal, but it also might be the most challenging.

That’s because church planting is costly, financially and emotionally. It means we send some of our favorite people and lots of our resources away. Just as we sacrifice in many ways to send global partners overseas, we will be asked to sacrifice good things in order to send or be sent, even just a few miles away. 

It’s worth it because Jesus is worthy.

As Pastor Paul Funchess challenged us after we sent him and a group to plant Trinity Church in 2022, “Where do we want the kingdom of Christ to be displayed? Where do you want God’s glory to be uniquely displayed? … As many places as we can get it. All over the place. Everywhere, which is why Jesus said, ‘Go.’”

What does this mean for me?

Each of these initiatives will be most successful with the collaboration of the entire church body.

First, all are asked to pray. Pray for the Spirit to lead the elders and pastors as they make decisions on details. Pray for God to provide the people and resources needed for fruitful ministry through these initiatives. Pray for God to build the house and establish the work of our hands, so that He will be glorified.

Pray also for your own involvement and that God will use the gifts He has given you to build up His church. As we will soon see when our sermon series reaches Ephesians 4, we each have a part to play.

And [Jesus] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, … [S]peaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Faith Bible Church

A loving community making disciples of Jesus Christ.

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