Video Transcript: Developing a Vision

All right, today we continue talking about vision. And today we're talking about developing a  vision. And part of that is developing a vision statement, which we'll get to. Next time, we've  already talked about that a little bit about needing to be clear and concise and a mental  picture and challenging and those sorts of things. But then, when we talk about a vision  before the vision statement, how do you develop a vision now, just as a reminder, here we are a model, a leader engages culture, to create a vision, which is a preferable future. And then  provides the impetus to do the actions and the prayer that are needed to bring that future  into reality. So that's what we're talking about today. There it Is. Birthing a vision. That's what I want to be talking about today. Who does it? All right, you are a leader, and you're coming  into an organization and you recognize as you have learned, its culture and how they do  things here, or you know, the history of the place, you know, how it's going to be impacted?  Now, who develops that vision for the future? And what that's going to look like? What it's  going to be? Who who does that? Well, there are a couple of different answers to that. One  would be the leader does it right. I mean, it's the leader. That does it. Sometimes, you'll find  that a strong natural leader that's SNL here, a strong natural leader. That's how it's  sometimes done. Several years ago, I had the opportunity to be in Lake Avenue  Congregational Church, large congregation in Pasadena, California. And I happened to be  there when their Pastor Paul Cedar, was coming back to share the vision that God had called  him to over the next year. And he had been up in the mountains for several days in the cabin  up there. And he'd been praying and fasting and asking God to give him a vision for what God was calling to the church to in this next season of its life. And so he was announcing it there.  Now, that's often the case of what happens in this sort of situation, that you get a very strong  natural leader, and they're coming back, and they're sharing what God has said to them. Now, that happens in many places in the United States, that will happen in blue collar churches, as  I said before, where people are used to being told what to do. More often, I think that the  vision has to come somewhat out of the people, if the vision is going to gather up the hopes  and the dreams and the desires of the people, it's got to engage them in the process of  identifying the vision. Now, the leader then in that kind of situation, provides the impetus or  for even creating the vision. And he'll provide a process that will help them create the vision.  And otherwise, you know, people will just follow the pastor, I've shared with you before about  the church that I served in California and sold the building to this other independent  congregation and, and boy, Pastor Duke is the one who told him where to go, because they  thought it was one step between him and God, and it was a very, very small step. Otherwise,  you'll probably need some others. Well, if you are going to be involved, as the strong natural  leader announcing that that's where God leads you. And that's where you think your gifts lie,  then you've got to know these truths that are below about knowing yourself, knowing your  context, and knowing God knowing good advice, you've got to know those well. It's even more important if you are the one who's working through a series of people groupings of people, or  you're working through certain key leaders, in order to envision what the future might be.  You've got to know these things about yourself because your leadership will be impacted. For  instance, you must know yourself. And we talked about that in that section on leadership a  whole lot about knowing your personality, you know, your spiritual gifts, knowing, knowing  your strengths and your weaknesses, knowing your dark side doing all of this stuff. But this  knowing yourself is a little different in that it looks at your life experiences. Now, in my  experience in life. I grew up in a church that was very conservative. It was it was totally  focused inwardly it was not focused outwardly at all. It was that that offspring of Dutch  immigrants, and we all kind of flock together and if we could all be together, we were happy.  And that's the kind of church I grew up in. And I had no models of what it meant for people to  come to faith in Jesus Christ. And I knew it happened. I'd read about it. I'd watched it on TV  occasionally. But in my church, there's one person in the 22 years I was a member of that  church, one person that came to faith through the ministry of that church and it was  somebody who married a young man of the church, and she was so excited about it. That she  began going to her neighborhood and to the women there they started a morning Bible study  of the ones that were available in the morning. And you know, over coffee, they would sit and  talk about the Bible and amazingly the elders of my church went and visited her and said she 

had to stop doing that. Because, you know, she wasn't trained. And it wasn't an official  ministry of the church. That's the kind of church I grew up in. Well, when I was in high school,  a group of us, all engaged in music went through a spiritual revival of sorts. And out of that  came a musical group, we call ourselves The Dreadful Noise. And we would go on Sunday  evenings, usually, to various venues as churches, services, and sing. And many times these  were in evangelistic kind of settings. And I will never forget the night we sang at the Honor  Camp, it was called the Honor Camp. It was the place where first offenders would go only for  a period of time. So they had short sentences. And there's no fences around. They were there  on their honor. And they would serve out their sentence there. Well, we did a service there in  conjunction with a teacher who'd come from a local school, and we provided the music. And  afterwards, we interacted over games, ping pong pool, etc. With the young men, all men who  were incarcerated there. And remember the day that this one man came to me and said, Can  I talk to you? Took me outside, and huge, young man, so I was a little intimidated by him.HeI  said, "you know, I've been thinking about what you folks said in there. And I'd like to pray and  receive Jesus Christ." And so I explained the gospel to him as best I could. I prayed with him  to receive Jesus Christ. And that changed my perspective, I knew that I wanted to be part of  that sort of thing. And that happened more and more as we sang. And then I began to get  involved in other kinds of ministries, where I got to share the Good News. Found, I didn't have  the gift of evangelism, spiritual gift. But that's what I wanted to be around. And so I knew  when I was entering ministry, I had a couple of different calls to different churches. And the  one was one like, I grown up, and I said, I knew that's not what I wanted to do and be. And so  I ended up in this other little tiny church in Plainwell, Michigan, and told you the story about  that. Knowing yourself is a big part of it, knowing your context, knowing your culture, you've  got to know your culture. We've talked about that in detail, but but knowing your culture so  that your presenting a future vision. You know, what needs to be changed at this point. Now,  there are some parts of your culture that will be very strong and very positive and will  contribute to reaching your vision. But there are some parts that will be changed, you must  know God, you must know that there are things that are possible, beyond what you can think  or dream. And you must know good advice. There are people who are very, very wise, and  you should listen to them. I was thinking of the time where I kind of decided that the vision of  our church should be that we were going to be involved planting churches. And so I made all  the arrangements for this to happen. We invited a young man in who was going to serve in  our church for a year, and he was going to gather a corps of people to go plant a church out a few miles from where we were. And in the process of doing that, because the money wasn't in the budget at all. I kind of manipulated things around. And yeah, I made it happen. I, I, I  tweaked the right levers at the right time and made it all happen. But then later, one of the  leaders, one of the church fathers said, "Yeah, I'd like to take you out to lunch." And we sat  there and he said, "you know," he said "you made this happen," he says, "But next time," he  says, "share your vision with those of us who are in leadership, and we can run it for you.  Otherwise, you're gonna have people who are automatically opposed, just because it comes  from you." So you must know good advice. I took that advice. And that's where I spent a lot of years working out a vision to impact a lot of people's lives. So who does it? The leader does it  but will also do it in connection with significant others, at least if you're not a strong natural  leader. In fact I love this quote from Bennis and Nanus there. They write about leadership from a  perspective, not Christian necessarily. This is just general business, general Corporation kind  of stuff, nonprofit stuff. They said "historians tend to write about great leaders, as if they were capable of creating their visions, and sense of destiny of some mysterious inner source,  perhaps some do. But upon closer examination, it usually turns out that the vision did not  originate with the leader personally, but rather from others." Wow, and that's the way you can go to have people say yes, wow, you're a leader, we want to go there. In fact, in my last  church, that's one of the reasons they called me is because as we began to talk, they wanted  to be moving in a certain direction, and they sensed that I could be one who could get them  there. So who does it? Well, the leader, maybe with some significant others. Now there's a  process by which visions are born. First of all, there's the gestation period. This because we're untapped opportunities arise, or dissatisfaction with the status quo, now untapped 

opportunities, Bill Bright in the United States here just felt a burden for college students, he  realized there wasn't any great ministry to college students. And so he established Campus  Crusade, he said, You know, there's an opportunity here, opportunity for young people who  are at an idealistic time of life, that we've got to find a way to reach them, and created this  

organization that has had an impact on hundreds of 1000s, maybe millions of young people,  on campuses around the United States and around the world. And it started because he saw  an untapped possibility, something that could fit for the future. Church Planting comes out of  this, when we were in Southern California, we realized that the number of people unreached,  

in Southern California was huge. And so we looked at that. And said "you know, we've been  planting maybe one church every five years, and we committed ourselves to a goal and a  vision of planting 50 churches over the next 10 years." It turns out as the momentum grew,  we ended up at year seven, planting 53 churches trying to reach the very communities,  various ethnic groups, etc. But it started out of a vision saying, "well look at all this  opportunity that exists here with this unchurched population opportunity for for the Gospels  and making inroads" started with an untapped opportunity. In my last church, we started a  ministry to families who have children with developmental disabilities. And we did that  because that we were looking at, as we always do, a report about our community. And it  indicated that only 8% of people with children with developmental disabilities attend church  at all. They can't because since their child was a baby, they've ended up staying home taking  care of the child. And sometimes there's behavior issues that make it difficult for that child to  be in, in public. And so they quit going. And therefore we had a couple of people in our  church, who developed a ministry started with a couple a few young children, and gradually  grew to 30-40 kids and young adults. A separate ministry on Tuesdays that engaged these  young adults, then. It came out of here's an opportunity. And there's got to be a way that we  include this in our overall vision as a church that doesn't fit with that. And so untapped  opportunities and dissatisfaction with the status quo. It's another way that visions start to  grow as a status quo. That's our Thank you read about this in Scripture, Acts 6 with the  appointing of the first deacons. It came out of a dissatisfaction with the status quo there,  there's not an equal distribution of food. So this has to change. And so the deacons are  chosen people who are full of the Holy Spirit, and they are chosen to do that work. And the  apostles now have a new vision for their role, their role is going to be a prayer and the  preaching of the Word. And so they divide that thing, but it came out of things aren't good,  we've got to have some changes here. We find that later on, in Acts 15, we realize there's that question about what is the church going to be like? You know is it going to live by the Jewish  laws? Or is there going to be a new day where there's no application to the Jewish laws  whatsoever. And so that tension, says, you know, what we have here is not good today. So  that's how it happens, gestation period, things are being thought through. Then there's a  growing phase visions expand as viable alternates alternatives are explored. That's how some churches are moving to multi site. You know, one of the leaders that I had the privilege of  sitting down when the first leaders who develop multisite congregation in the United States  started, because they began looking at their choices, their alternatives, the church had been  growing for a period of time, and now it was looking like they would have to make a choice.  They would have to build, or they began to look at other alternatives. You know, would we  maybe create different worship services or plant daughter churches around the area? And  then the third one was, what if we take our worship service and we put it in these different  sites, and we create these ministries with our vision with our DNA in it, what would that look  like? And that's how that got started. It started because there had been looking at the  alternatives to solve some problems related to their growth. Now, that bad one, bottom one,  leaders versus critics, there's a difference between there are a lot of people who have pointed out the deficiencies of the status quo, they'll do that. And those are often called critics and  they are multitude in number. And you don't listen to critics as much. But there's a difference  between a critic who just sees the dissatisfaction experiences the dissatisfaction and  communicates that. That's different than a leader who's leading people to solve it. Bill Hybels  years ago was talking about being on a study break. And every morning he would walk to  Burger King near his house, and that's where he'd have breakfast. While he sat and meditated

over the scriptures and etc. And he said, there was a door that just drove him crazy, because  it was squeaky. He said, eight weeks straight. Nobody had oiled, that door or repaired it. And  he realized he said, I'd become a critic. But he says, he realized also, that there was no leader there that was looking at this and saying, Wow, that's got to change. Simple thing. But just an example, about how that can work. Many will point out the deficiencies of where you are. So it 

goes through a growing phase where, okay, what are the alternatives, we're we're sensing  that there's dissatisfaction with the status quo, or there's this new opportunity, we're looking  at the alternatives. And then comes the just a minute, I've got a confused here, leaders  versus critics. And then comes the developmental phase, where prayer takes place. A lot of  prayer, we're gonna talk about prayer, a great deal as we get into rolling out the vision and,  and talking about that, but the group that's developing it should be people who are praying,  and then there's that idea of thinking big now, and then putting it on paper. Now, just to  reflect on each of those prayer, where God calls us to go, that's what we have to decide, then  the how is not really our concern. For instance, Abraham, God called him to establish a new  nation. Now that's a huge vision, establish a new nation out of which is going to come the  Messiah, eventually, that he would be a blessing to all nations. But God didn't say, Okay,  here's how it's all going to happen. He led him step by step, or Moses. Said you know, I want  you to deliver the people, Moses got that message all wrong and killed the Egyptian because  he thought everybody would rise up and say, Oh yep, this is the guy, let's go. Instead, God  created a whole different way of how and those hows are determined through prayer,  example of Jericho. Here's this group that's never really fought any major battles, some minor  battles out out on their way there. But now, Jericho is huge. In fortress building, it's one that  has this wall, that the history tells us had a wall wide enough that chariot races could take  place on the top of it, how would they ever knock down that wall, and yet they came to God  and they trusted him, God gave them a battle plan of just marching around and he'd take  care of it. A Mary, the mother of Jesus asked, How is this going to be when the angel  announced to her that she was going to become pregnant through the Holy Spirit? And God  said, I got this, this is what's going to happen? Nehemiah, of course, how's it gonna happen,  God took care of it. So there's a contrast, you can have a lot of good ideas in this whole  section, where you are in the developmental phase of the vision, or you can come to God and  get God ideas, the kind that are going to get you past. So prayer. And then that whole idea of  listening to people and thinking big. Now, this list here, it comes from Andy Stanley, in his  book on visioneering. He tells about the time he had a woman come to him with this great  vision for a ministry within the church of older women mentoring younger women. And he  said he just zapped the vision right out of them by asking all these questions, how will you  find the women to be mentored? Who's going to be mentoring? How are you going to find  those women? How will you train the mentors? What program will you use? How long will the  program last? Who's in charge of this whole thing? How are you going to pair women up?  What curriculum, etc, etc, etc, etc. to drain the vision. And so they weren't necessarily  thinking very big. So. So developmental phase prayer thinking big, putting it on paper,  thinking big, Nehemiah. Imagine all the years that those people that lived with broken down  walls and didn't even realize the limitation it put on them. Read Hebrews 11, the heroes of the faith. People like Moses, people like Abraham, people like Noah, who are given great visions  and visions that were way beyond their capacity by themselves to accomplish. That's what  I'm talking about when I'm talking about having a great vision. It's having something that you  can't do without the movement of God. So thinking big. And then the questioning phase, it's  the time to start asking questions about the vision, especially when you start getting the  wording down. we'll talk about that next session. But questions like, Is this vision culturally  relevant? Does it fit in my setting? Is it clear? Is it compelling? Is it future oriented? And how  long in the future? This is a Chinese proverb, "if your vision is for a year, plant wheat, if your  vision is for 10 years plant trees, if your vision is for a lifetime, plant people," How long is your vision? Is it realistic, get stretching? Those are the kind of questions you asked in the  questioning phase. Does this fit? And when we talk about the process of getting a group  together and working through a process of talking about where's God calling us to go? How  are we going to get there? These are the kind of questions you ask in the questioning phase. 

And then finally, you get to the patience phase. In other words, it takes some time for visions  to become reality. You know, when I was interviewing my friend, Frank, back in session seven.  And he talked about the fact that how painful it was to get critics who didn't see the vision  that they had developed as the vision that they wanted for the church, and how critics hurt.  And yet, he said, again, that that was only the first don't 8 or 10 years after that it got easier  and easier and easier. And people were anticipating their annual banquet where they could  see the vision. Some people leave too soon, they give up too soon, because the critics hurt,  they do hurt, it's painful to be criticized. One man, I know in Southern California felt called to  turn around churches. Came to a church there and began to change things to make that  church more relevant to its culture, the bigger culture, so they had to make some changes. So they changed worship, they changed structure, changed a lot of things. And then he left. And  sure enough, one person described it as a rubber band, you know, a leader can stretch,  stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch that rubber band, but if you move remove the leader, it's  going to go back like that very, very quickly. And that's what happened in that church.  Because the establishment of the vision hadn't come to the point where people just accepted  that as the new reality. And so anyway, that's the patience phase means, you know, I'm in this I'm going to work on this vision. I'm going to work through this vision. I'm going to work with  these people to see reality set in new concrete. When we talk about change process few  sessions from now on, we're going to look at how that works and how you establish and put in concrete a new culture within the culture you've been working with. So those are things about birthing a vision