Chapter 9: Chapter 2 Vision

At home, Sara was recovering from Stage 3 cancer, and my brother Keith had died from pancreatic cancer. At church, we had endured several difficult seasons. We were finally able to hire a youth pastor, only to let him go a year later. Our staff struggled with conflicting agendas.

I attended several pastors' conferences and listened to stories of churches that had experienced remarkable growth. The message was simple: Build your church this way, and yours can grow too.

But our context was different.

We weren't in Southern California or suburban Chicago. We were in Utah County—the most religious county in the most religious state in America. More than 90 percent of our city belonged to the same church.

One thing became painfully obvious at those conferences: we were under-resourced. Churches our size often had two or three times our budget. It was easy to become envious.

I began wondering what it would be like to pastor somewhere else. Maybe Utah Valley was simply too difficult.

I even entered conversations with a church in Colorado looking for a lead pastor. But the further those discussions went, the clearer it became: I wasn't called to pastor just anywhere. If I was going to be a pastor, it would be in Utah.

There was plenty to encourage us.

Our church had grown to about 500 people. More and more attendees were coming from LDS backgrounds—first singles and college students, then entire families. Over the years that trend continued until today roughly two-thirds of our congregation comes from some type of LDS background.

Watching those transitions taught me something important.

People don't leave Mormonism and arrive healthy, whole, and ready to become fully engaged church members. They often arrive carrying profound grief. Many describe leaving the LDS Church as feeling like a divorce or the death of a loved one. They are deeply wounded by organized religion.

We often say, "We're not trying to reach the unchurched. We're trying to reach the overly churched."

Former Mormons frequently struggle to trust any church again.

Many have also spent their entire lives hearing that pastors of Christian churches are "preachers for hire"—people motivated by a paycheck rather than conviction. That means the very people we're trying to shepherd often begin with a deep distrust of us.

Leaving the LDS Church also comes at a tremendous cost. I've watched people lose family relationships, jobs, and social standing because of their decision to follow Christ.

Seeing that changed me.

I realized that if we were going to shepherd people well, we had to be willing to stay for the long haul. I stopped envying pastors in other places.

One advantage of serving in Utah was that I never wondered why we were here. Our mission was clear: reach these people.

It became a privilege to pastor courageous people.

One of those people was Tom Bradley.

Tom and his family began attending our church in the early 2000s and soon became close friends. Coming from a large, tightly knit LDS family, Tom's transition out of Mormonism was incredibly difficult. I still remember his baptism, when members of his family attended and his mother walked out in tears.

Tom grew into a key leader in our church. As a business owner, he employed many young adults from our congregation. He and his wife, Renee, opened their home and invested deeply in our college and young adult ministry.

Through Tom, I learned even more about the people God had called us to reach.

Around that same time, Tom and others began dreaming about what our church could become. Together we prayed bold prayers and imagined a bold future.

Out of those conversations came what we called the Chapter 2 Vision.

We presented that vision to the congregation in the fall of 2006. It centered on three commitments.

The first was to recommit ourselves to the original vision we embraced in 1989: to be a church that exists to reach the people of Utah Valley.

Over the previous fifteen years, I had learned that every church naturally drifts toward what I call the MEH Church—a church trying to "Make Everyone Happy." Ironically, when pleasing everyone becomes the goal, no one is truly happy. That's where we found ourselves.

Recommitting to our original vision meant asking a harder question:

Were we willing to make difficult decisions to reach the people of this valley?

That led to the second commitment: relocating our church.

Our problem wasn't opposition. It was invisibility.

We owned two acres across from Orem High School and had expanded our building twice, but unless you attended the high school, you probably never noticed we existed.

Our goal became simple: move from a place that was hard to find to a place that was impossible to miss.

In 2006 we found five and a half acres of highly visible property along the freeway, just half a mile south of University Parkway—the busiest intersection in Utah Valley.

The property cost $1.85 million.

We put our old building up for sale, leased it to a private school, and moved our Sunday services to Orem High School in September 2006. We raised the down payment and purchased the property in 2007.

What we didn't realize was that relocating would begin a nearly ten-year journey without a permanent home.

During those years we met in four different schools and moved our offices four times. It was a long, difficult season.

The third commitment was to rename our church.

The word evangelical had become an unnecessary barrier in Utah. Most people either didn't know what it meant or associated it with televangelist scandals or national politics.

The timing only reinforced that perception. During Mitt Romney's 2008 presidential campaign, many Utahns blamed evangelicals for refusing to support a Mormon candidate.

But being evangelical isn't about politics.

Our denomination, the Evangelical Free Church, traces its roots to Scandinavia, where "Free" churches were independent of state control. Evangelical simply means believing and proclaiming the good news—the evangel—of Jesus Christ.

So we asked ourselves:

Why keep a name that created an unnecessary obstacle for the very people we wanted to reach?

We agreed we wouldn't change our name unless we found one that truly captured our mission.

We did.

CenterPoint reflected our desire to point people to Jesus while serving at the center of Mormon culture.

Our leadership embraced the change, but not everyone did.

The new name quickly became the lightning rod for broader frustrations about the Chapter 2 Vision.

Both the relocation and the name change required congregational approval.

Ironically, purchasing $1.85 million worth of property generated little resistance. But when we voted to change the church's name in 2008, we held the largest congregational meeting in our history.

The motion required a 75 percent majority and passed with 83 percent.

Many people remained unhappy. Some were simply weary of talking about vision, fundraising, property, and building plans.

Others became critical of my preaching.

I often heard, "I want to go deeper, and Pastor Scott doesn't preach deeply enough."

At first those comments hurt. Eventually they helped shape my understanding of biblical preaching.

When I asked what people meant by "going deeper," many said they wanted verse-by-verse teaching. Ironically, I had already preached through numerous books of the Bible, including nearly two years in Luke.

During that series I heard different criticism:

"We need more practical teaching."

By that they meant messages about marriage, parenting, finances, and work.

It reminded me of Jesus' words:

"We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn."

I realized that the preacher's calling is not to make people happy.

Biblical preaching must always begin with Scripture and always point people to Jesus.

I also came to understand that "going deep" is not primarily a teaching method. It's a way of life.

Deep roots produce lasting fruit. Deep foundations support great height.

Going deep means standing firm when criticism and adversity come.

That's what we chose to do with our Chapter 2 Vision.

Not everyone stayed. After the name change, about eighty people left the church.

There were moments when we wondered whether we had made the right decisions.

But we remained committed to being a church that reaches the people of Utah Valley.

Looking back, I'm grateful we chose both to relocate and to rename the church. Those decisions were essential to CenterPoint's future growth.

More importantly, they deepened our trust in the Lord and strengthened our love for one another.