Christian International’s Vision Statement:
TO ESTABLISH APOSTLES AND PROPHETS TO EQUIP THE SAINTS TO TRANSFORM THE WORLD SO THAT CHRIST MAY RETURN.
Visions have a way of growing and expanding over time. CI strives to be a God-led organization, and our understanding of our corporate vision is a discovery process. We follow the vision God gives us and adapt as new revelation unfolds.
When CI started in the late 1960s, its entire vision was to educate people to do the work of the ministry. In the mid-1970s, its leader, Dr. Bill Hamon, received revelation and experience about prophetic ministry. By the mid-1980s, this revelation infused the organization, and CI’s vision was updated to “Establish prophets to make ready a people and prepare the way for the coming of the Lord.” In the 1990s, a new revelation about the need for apostles to partner with prophets was received, leading to another upgrade of the vision to “To establish apostles and prophets to equip the saints for the coming of the Lord.”
During the past 20 years, while all this revelation about apostles and prophets was unfolding, the emphasis on the marketplace as an important aspect of what the organization was doing for God grew, leading to the establishment of marketplace ministry to facilitate the equipping of the saints and ministry outside religious church structures.
Now, a clearer revelation is emerging. The marketplace ministry isn’t just an outlet for saints to fulfill their ministry callings, but rather, the marketplace (or culture) is the target for all the equipping, with the purpose being to establish the Kingdom in the culture. This is the core teaching of what is known as the “7 Mountain” message.
According to Matthew 24:14, the key to the coming of the Lord is the preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom to the nations, and the kingdoms of the world must become the Kingdom of our Lord (Revelation 11:15). This means that equipping and marketplace resources must be refocused to impact saints in local churches and communities, as it is the saints who will influence and change the culture.
With this revelation, CI leaders felt the challenge to enhance the vision and the need to take action in response to the revelation that God released about reformation. Today, CI’s vision “To establish apostles and prophets to equip the saints to transform the world so that Christ may return”, expresses a more integrated approach to equipping saints and reforming culture; to be an effective reformer, one must first be reformed. Of course, sending prophets and apostles to the nations to preach the Kingdom will continue, but the whole vision is to equip the saints to establish the Kingdom, by influencing every culture so that Christ will return.