Video Transcript: Mission and Vision Continued

Welcome back. We're going to continue today talking about mission and vision. Now last time, we talked a little bit about mission and you know, we tried to describe the distinction between vision and mission and mission statements, we looked at some mission statements and tried to define those in that process, I did give you some of the material about vision. For instance, we talked about Andy Stanley's of idea about what vision does, he said it weaves together four things into the fabric of our daily experience. And one of those four things, well it's a passion of an anticipated future. In other words, there's something passionate about it. You know, when you read or hear that speech by Dr. Martin Luther King, he's passionate about it. The people were passionate about it. I don't think we can quite imagine today here in the United States, what it was like to be a black man or a black woman or a black child, back in 1963, when he made that speech, but as he created this wonderful picture of white and black children playing together, there was a passion that was around that it was so powerful, that it made those people be willing to be able to be beaten by police to be arrested and put into jail, some of them killed in a variety of ways. It made them passionate, because they're saying this is this is what I want to see happen. This is what I want to see become reality. So passion: vision, weaves together passions, the passions of the people. 

Back when many, many sessions ago back in session seven, when we interviewed Frank Levers, he talked about that idea of passionate about God's people wanting to go somewhere, that we can be just in this cycle of a church doing the same thing over and over again. And people will get worn out doing, that they want to go forward and what they want a sense that God is leading us somewhere. So, a good vision statement, a good vision that is presented to people includes this idea of passion, there's somewhere that we must go, not just could go, but we should go, we must go. So, it's that idea of passion. It's the idea of motive, of motivation, that we are trying to be pulled forward into the future, it gives us a sense of where we're going and gives us some definition for it. In fact, we've talked about North Star, that image that we've been using that kind of star out there, and it's a thing we measure ourselves by. Well, the vision is something that pulls us forward.

One of the people I've referred to in these lectures is a man named Mark Madison, pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC. And through a process that took a while, he developed a vision and his vision was to plant all of these churches in movie houses because he saw all these theaters that weren't used on Sunday morning at all. And so, it was a rather cheap rental place. And that's how they got started. And that's where they found their roots. He began doing this and presented it to the church, they saw what a thing that could be, what influence all over the country and beyond. And so, they developed a vision statement about doing 20 of these in the next year 20. For the new churches, and it was something that pulled people forward to do what they wanted to do. It provides direction. In other words, I told a story about Andy Stanley selling his musician equipment, because he knew that wasn't the direction he was going. There are certain things that you say no to, in order to say yes to when you've got a good vision working.

I remember when I came to the church I last served, there was a group of people that wanted to start a counseling ministry. And they were well motivated. So, a couple of them had degrees in counseling, had experience in counseling. And we began looking at what is going to be our mission and vision for the next stage of life as we started talking about strategic planning for the next three to five years for the life of that congregation. And it became very clear in the process as we did the investigative work, that there were plenty of counseling centers, Christian counseling centers in town, there's opportunity to get there, one of them even charged on a sliding scale. And so, we looked at that and said, we really don't need that. That's not part of our vision. I'll share with you the statement we came up with later, but it's involving growth within the congregation and growth within the individual and growth within the kids and the young adults and the teenagers that God's given us. So that was our vision and we just didn't quite fit what we were trying to do. Now maybe we could have made it fit. But it gave us direction to say okay, what are those things that are going to give us the best bang for our buck? Colloquially saying what's going to be the most effective in accomplishing this vision so it gives direction and it gives purpose gives a reason to get up in the morning to be engaged in doing what you're doing, and that's what a vision does now, you know, just to remind ourselves. 

I hate to go back and remind so much but mission defines the present state or purpose of an organization, and answers the three questions that we looked at as we were evaluating those mission statements last time. What does the organization do? Who it does it for? And how it does what it does? That's the questions of a mission statement. But a vision statement, in contrast, defines a future state. This is what the organization wants over a period of time, it was what it wants to accomplish over a period of time. And so, it's something that's there. A mission statement says, This is what's here. This is who we are. But this is what we are becoming: that's the vision statement, what we are becoming in the future. And so that gives guidance to wrong long-range planning. We looked at that fact that it functions as a North Star, that idea of using the sextant by those sailors and in the years gone by, to define where they are in relationship to the North Star, because that's defining how they can get where they're going, and the corrections they have to make in order to get where they're going. And so, it functions as a North Star. And a good vision statement is succinct, and inspirational.

So, with that in mind, what are the characteristics of a good vision statement? Here are some that you should be aware of as you start thinking of making a statement. You may have an idea about where God is calling you, but unless you can articulate it and articulate it well, and in a memorable way, the vision statement will not become reality; it will be forgotten and put in a drawer somewhere. So, what are the characteristics of a really good vision statement that summarize where God is calling you and your organization to go?

Well, first of all, it's clear. It's not ambiguous. I'll quote this one. Many times, in the process of the next few weeks, as we talk about vision, as we talk about Nehemiah his work and rebuilding the walls in Jerusalem. Nehemiah has done his groundwork. He's come to the city of Jerusalem; he's taken that nighttime ride around the city to see what shape it's really in. So, he got an idea what's really going on there what the need really is, he maybe has begun interacting with some of the people who have been living with that city in that state for years and years and years and years. And now he's ready to talk to them about the future. And he makes it very clear what he feels the vision for the future is, "I said to them, you see the trouble we are in Jerusalem lies in ruins and its gates have been burned with fire Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and we will no longer be in disgrace." It's clear, no ambiguity, what are we going to be doing in the future, we're going to be rebuilding that wall. That's the immediate future that God has called us to. That's a vision He's called us to. That's why God sent me here. Nehemiah says over and over again through the book of Nehemiah. So it's clear, no ambiguity about where we're going. I'm going there. And we are going here.

Secondly, it's challenging. Now, it's challenging in a couple of ways. One, it's good to just have a challenge. You don't want to do something that's just easy to involve God's work and God's Spirit and the strength and power of God at work in you and through you. But it's also challenging, because almost all visions require some level of change in us. Some level of change in the way we do things here. Now, when we get moving towards strategic planning, we're going to have to talk about how some values that we've held in an organization, maybe we'll have to change in order to meet the new reality or reach the new vision. But it involves change and change is always painful for people. I was reading just this morning, and I neglected to bring your book along. But it's a book titled Who Moved My Pulpit by Thom Rainer. Thom Rainer is a consultant here in the United States. And he just talks about how difficult change is for people and he gives several illustrations. He said, "You know in the one church. It was unbelievable what happened when the pastor was deciding that in order to reach their vision of becoming an outward focused congregation that was able to welcome people from the community in, he had to change his style of preaching. And so he began gradually to experiment with fewer notes and not preaching to the manuscript as he did before. And then he realized as he was going through that process, that he stood behind his massive pulpit every week to preach. And so, he decided that that had to go and instead he moved the pulpit out. And he got this little lectern that he sat there. And he said, it was unbelievable. The communications that he got one person described him as, you know, sent him an eight-page letter about how he was denying God's Will about he was reprobate and that he was going to person writing him was going to find a way of getting him dismissed as pastor of that congregation, which in some traditions is a very real threat. And on and on and on, because of a simple thing like moving a pulpit.

Change is threatening, in fact, in the book, Rainer listed 15 of his favorite reasons people fight within a church. And they're wacko reasons, when you start looking at them, you know, about whether they should buy this copier, or that copier, or one Deacon accused another deacon in the church of a sending an anonymous letter and the other one denying it and they end up taking their fight outside and actually engaged in a physical fight on the church grounds; about how long the youth pastor's beard could be, and he could still be acceptable there and all those kinds of things. That's what the church can easily engage in, if there's no vision to say, We've got to go there. And so, it's challenging to present a vision.

Now, here's a reality that could be helpful to you. And that is, the longer you stay, the more likely you will have less and less criticism, and less and less fighting and less and less challenge. But generally speaking, when you present a new vision to an organization, there's going to be a challenge of change. Now, here's a diagram. It's a bell curve. And what's listed on here is how people react to changes that are proposed. You'll note on the left side, there is that group called the innovators, 2 1/2% of people in general are innovators. These are the people who, if you present a new idea for them, they're on board. You know, these are the people who are waiting in line for the new Apple iPhone because they don't want to wait a week and order it from somewhere and get it later. So, they're ready to go. You present a new idea to them, a new vision, they're saying, Yes, that sounds so good. And they're on board.

Then there's the early adopters, 13 1/2%. These are people who if you present it to them, and it makes sense to them, they'll come on board, and they'll say, Yeah, well, I want to be part of that.

Then there's the early majority, that 34% of the congregation or the organization or the community, 34% will be early majority, there'll be early adopters, they'll come in with you on the vision, if they think the reasons are good enough. They're not just ready to jump on board. But if you give a well-reasoned argument or presentation about why this vision is what God wants for us at this time, they'll come on board, and they'll say, Yep, okay, we're with you.

The late majority, again, 34% are late adopters. In other words, they'll be more ones that are sitting back and saying, Well, let's see how this all works out. And so, they won't jump on board, or maybe they'll vote for something, but they won't give to it. They'll vote for a building program. But you know, when it comes down to Hey, will you commit money to this, they're gonna sit back and see how it works out. Or we're gonna change our style of worship, because we realize that we, in order to be relevant to our immediate community, we have to have a different style of worship than what we've had. And they'll sit back and say, well see how this works out. And then hopefully, they'll join on as momentum is built through a vision and people start seeing it making a difference. They'll come on board, but they're a late majority.

And then they're the laggards. These are the people who are still working with flip phones. And they're saying it still works, why should I get rid of this? They, they are not likely to be approving the changes that you are recommending. And some of them will be critics. Now, this diagram doesn't say how many of those, how many percentage of people will come against any new vision, just by matter, of course, because they generally speaking are against everything. But you've got to know, when you are presenting a vision, it's got to be challenging. In other words, it's, it's going to cause these people some anxiety. Except for the innovators, and maybe the early adopters, because what you are presenting is going to require them to change. So it's got to be challenging. And it's got to be a mental picture.

Moses on Mount Nebo is an example of that. He sees this wonderful picture. And somehow, you know, he writes it down for the book of Deuteronomy. As he stands on Mount Nebo, he's given this vision of a promised land. And he told he's telling the people all the time, it's a land, silver, milk and honey, it's a land. It's a beautiful land sent in the spies earlier. And they come back and affirm this is a wonderful land. And so, he pictures all of the beauty that's coming, if the people will just go in and obey God and take the land, live out the vision. Now, you know, they have failed to do that, 40 years earlier. But now once again, he's up there and he is himself isn't going to enter the promised land the promised land, but he draws a picture for the people of what it's going to be like, and so it involves a picture. Martin Luther King's speech, what incredible pictures in drew and that speech, that's the secret. As I said before, it's good preaching. It's good teaching, but certainly in proclaiming a vision, to create pictures, to create pictures of who is going to benefit to create pictures about how this is going to look, when we have attained this vision, when we've reached this vision. Now, you know, as I said, when we talked about Martin Luther King's speech, you know, there are questions today, whether it's been realized or not, and in many cases here in the United States, it has not. And that's still something we should be grieving about here yet today. But there has been progress made in the process of becoming more equal as a race. I lived in Southern California when my children were young. And I remember when my second child, a daughter was seven years old. And she came home one day and had somehow become aware that there are differences between her and her best friends. And so, she came in to our house. And in a reflective moment, that was almost humorous. She said, "You know, my best friend, Gina is brown." A Hispanic girl who lived a few doors down she played with regularly. And she said, "my second-best friend is browner." That was Rachel, African American. And then she looked at herself and she said, "I'm sort of beige." But for her, there were no differences in that ethnic difference. And so when I look at that, I think, oh, I thank God for Martin Luther King, who challenged us, who led us and looking at each other in different ways than trying to define us by our race, so that my child could not look at people and judge them by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, which is one of the statements from Martin Luther King.

So yes, so you create pictures. And people say, Yes, that's what I want. So, it's a mental picture of the future. It's also future oriented. It's not looking back to the past, you can do that in the history. And you can do that in the background to why you've come to the vision you've had. But it's something that's looking at short term and maybe long term. Nehemiah, his vision was a short-term vision. I mean, it was just a matter of a couple of months. And they had those walls built. It was an incredible feat. One that was powerful. But it took a short time. So that was the short-term vision. Now, long term vision would be more like what people had here in the United States for good or ill. And that was that there was this idea about Manifest Destiny, that it was the destiny of the United States to take over the entire middle of the continent. And so people began, you know, driving out the Indians, because, you know, this is what our vision is, we're going to control the whole thing. And so, buying the middle section, the Louisiana Purchase, buying a section from rusty Russia for Alaska, but fighting a war over the western states with this is where we're going. We want to own that's a long-term vision. So, it's future oriented. It's saying, "This is what I want to happen, what I want the future to become by God's grace."

And then finally, it is achievable. It is something that can be reached. Now, one of the people I think of is this man, a person on the left, his name is Dan Brink. Friend of mine in Southern California. He accepted a call to a church that had been declining in numbers for years and years and years and years. It's a Christian Reformed Church. And they came here, in 1800s, a group of Dutch people came to the United States, and they began establishing churches, in various places, wherever those immigrants from the Netherlands came, they settled, and they started these churches, and they also started Christian schools alongside of them, so that the children could be educated there rather than in the public schools. And this church had noticed that people have moved out of the community and that the birth rate was going down and membership was going down, their ability to pay bills was going down. And Dan accepted a call to this congregation. And then after being there for a little while, he said, you know, if this church is going to survive and thrive and be everything that God calls it to be, I think there's a vision for another future. We've got to explore that. So, they hired a consultant to come in. And he led them through this process, a process similar to what we'll get to later when we talk about strategic planning. And then in one of the meetings where they had various people involved in small groups and large groups, small group large group over the night, as they talked about what was God calling them to? They came up with this wild list of things that we're going to change the basic culture and the core values of the congregation and the consultant had told Dan beforehand that his job was then to get up and say, We can't do this. He said, it's going to cost money, it's going to cost a lot of our energy, it's going to cost some people here who aren't going to agree with the way we're going, and they're going to leave us. So, I don't think we can do this. And said they're serving in the consultant. And so, my role is to come up and say, "You know, you've all got a choice here today, you can continue doing what you do until you die. Or you can say, Yes, we can do this, we can do this." And they voted, the church went through a change, man in the middle of the Hispanic, director of the Spanish speaking church that they have within their facility, and the woman on the right is on staff there as the ministry coordinator in that congregation, but it's achievable. And here's just one picture of the church that was dying 20 years ago, and look at this group of people who are going out on a mission together. It's a thriving congregation.

So, the characteristics are, it's clear, it's challenging, it involves change, it's a mental picture, creates a picture of where we're going, and it is achievable. Let's look at some statements, some vision statements and just say, do they have these characteristics? For instance, Alzheimer's Association, our vision is a world without Alzheimer's disease. Wow. Now that's a powerful vision. Anybody who's seen anyone suffer from Alzheimer's? Who has been a caregiver or has had a family member, or a friend who developed Alzheimer's. They'll say, "Yes, I want to be part of that, I'll be part of that. I'm going to sign on, I'm going to give money I'm gonna, I'm going to because I'm committed to this too. That's the future." So that's one.

Microsoft, another great vision statement. Of course, they've got professionals working on this sort of thing. "Empower people through great software, anytime, anyplace, and on any device." That's clear. Creates a passion for some people more than others. But it's achievable. They're working on it. And they're becoming more and more achievable. It's a lovely kind of vision statement that has given guidance to their corrections, or their giving guidance to their decisions for years and years and years.

Now let's look some church ones, ones we've looked at "impacting 100,000 Phoenix area residents by the year 2020." Now that's nine behind there, I got this off the internet. I just asked for vision statements of churches. And so, Christ Church of the Valley in Peoria, Arizona came up and this is their vision statement, not certainly as forward thinking, future thinking certainly as creates a mental picture. 100,000 people now there might be some visuals that would go along with that that would really help them but it creates that idea. We're moving forward. It's challenging. I don't know how big this church is, I don't know anything about this church. But I know that if you're going to impact 100,000 people by the year 2020. This probably was made in 2015. That that's an amazingly challenging experience. And one that people will say, Yeah, how about a church that's impacting the community that's outwardly focused, I'm on board. The nine is the number of words. And so in this website, it lists the number of words for each one because they're trying to say, it's got to be concise. 

Okay, let's look at some of the others. The Potter's House in Dallas, Texas, well known congregation here in the United States, "We are the voice and the hand that encourages people to change their lives with hope, comfort and peace." If I were there, I'd say let's redo that one. I'm not so sure. It's challenging. I think it's more of a mission statement than it is a vision statement. Doesn't say where they're going. It just says this is this is who we are. And so, I'm not really excited about that one.

New Spring Church in Anderson, South Carolina "to continue growing, impacting lives and using technology and the arts to reach 100,000 people for Jesus Christ." Now there's a challenging kind of statement. It's clear 100,000 people, and this is something of a how we're going to do it. We're going to do it with technology and the arts. And that's going to create a growing congregation. And all the implications of that which we'll talk about later.

Perimeter Church in St. Johns Creek, Georgia, or Johns Creek, Georgia. Now Perimeter Church is an interesting congregation because it was started by a man named Randy Pope. And Randy had a vision for creating a string of churches that would be the perimeter of Atlanta. So, they are on one of the perimeter churches, perimeter, highways, freeways, and so the idea was to populate within easy driving distance, that entire area with churches. While here's their vision statement "To make and deploy, mature and equip followers of Christ for the sake of family, community and global transformation." Some nice things about that, I guess. But wow, when I look at that vision, I think you know what, we are going to be about changing the city of Atlanta. We're going to do that by establishing churches at regular intervals. And these churches are going to be committed to making disciples of Jesus Christ, and then deploy them so that people's lives are changed in their families in their community, and, and through that, to impact the world with missions that are going out and being funded, etc, etc. I think that one could be a whole lot more exciting,

Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, the Church that is richly honored. Kennedy method of evangelism came out of that congregation, the method that started with those two questions, you know, if you were to die tonight, do you know that you go to heaven. And if you were to die tonight, and go to heaven, and you'd stand before Jesus, and he were to ask you, why should we let you into heaven? What would your answer be? And then it was a method that was used for decades, in training people to share their stories and to share the gospel story in a very engaging way. So, this is a church that has a history; it started with 12 people and grew to 1000s. And Pastor Kennedy is now in heaven. But this is their statement, "To rescue and replenish a world lost and broken by sin, thereby making all things new." I don't know about you, but that just doesn't excite me a whole lot. If I could rewrite that one, I would probably rewrite it to say, "We're about seeing lost and broken people meet Jesus Christ, who can make a difference in their life and restore their dignity and, and heal them and make all things new. And we're about doing that within this community, etc." You get the idea.

Redeemer, Presbyterian Church, Tim Keller's Church in New York. Now, they obviously are community oriented. This is a thriving congregation. And their vision statement is "To build a great city, for all people in the city of New York, through a gospel movement that brings personal conversion, community formation, social justice and cultural renewal to New York City and through it to the world." Now again, similar to the other one, I don't find that to be real. One that creates passion. Whereas you could say, "We envision New York changed, because of the presence of churches that are engaged in a gospel movement, that are reaching out to people to introduce you to Jesus Christ, who can transform their lives etc."

And then this one we've seen from Saddleback, and I didn't read through this whole thing, I think this thing could be rewritten in a very powerful way, if you just took some statements from it as such. It's just too big. Nobody's going to remember this stuff. But if you just took some phrases out of here and made it into a vision statement, so using that it's a dream. It's a dream of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ in the series of 20,000. People join our church over the next several years. It's the dream of equipping believers for signal, significant ministry. So that they're deployed and doing God's work. It is the dream of sending out career missionaries and church workers around the world. It's a dream, just use that, shorten that up, you could make that into a very powerful and wonderful statement of vision.

Now, I tried to make myself vulnerable last time by sharing what our mission statement was, in my previous church was, "We exist to help each other take the next step in our relationship with Jesus Christ by gathering growing and going," here's our vision statement. And it's one that we're going to look at later. Because after doing this study for this session, if I could redo this one, I'd love a chance to do that and do it again, and a part piece. But our vision statement was "to grow larger. And we explain that by saying "it's not just to be big, but so that we can have a greater impact on this community in the name of Jesus to grow deeper. And that is to create people are moving along those steps.

So, the Willow Creek growth spectrum, and then to grow younger or to reach the next generation." That's our vision statement. As I look at it, not very exciting, not very clear, not very concise, and so I'd love to have a chance to redo that. So anyway, so this is the beginning of what does it take to make a vision statement? It takes these kinds of activities it takes thinking through things in this way, as far as: what is the future? What is it going to look like? And how do I engage people with mental pictures that are exciting and a great passion for the future? So next time, we're going to continue this discussion. See you then

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, 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 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 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 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 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 I 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. He 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. I 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 knowing your culture so that you’re 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 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 where 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 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.

Therefore we had a couple of people in our church who developed a ministry started with 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: a 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 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 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 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 it had a wall wide enough that chariot races could take place on the top of it. How would they ever knock down that wall? 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. 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's 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. to drain the vision. And so they weren't necessarily thinking very big. 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 a few sessions from now, 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

Nurturing Vision Interview with Frank Weavers

Bruce - Welcome back to learning to lead. We've been talking about leadership and that whole definition, I'll give it to you again, because you have to know it by the time you're done with this class. Leadership is the process of a leader encountering culture, the way we do things here, in order to define of preferable future and then provide the impetus for the planning, and the programming that is needed to be done to make the future a reality. That's what we're about. We're in the area called leadership. But we've been talking about how you find out you're a leader and what those leadership gifts look like, and how you knowing yourself, will help you be a leader. We've been talking about that for the past several sessions. And it's my privilege to introduce to you today probably my longest term friend in history, Frank Weavers. He's been a friend for over 50 years, we kind of grew up together since middle school. And we ended up going through seminary together. And it's been a time of connecting with each other over the years just to get to know each other, to help each other. And I've come to know him as a tremendous leader. He is a husband. He's a father, he's a grandfather. But he's also been an incredibly effective leader. And so it's my privilege, as I'm trying to bring some practical practicing leaders into your experience out there to introduce Frank to you. So Frank, maybe you can tell us first of all, just how how you have grown as a leader. I mean, growing up, what kind of experiences do you have that would say, guy, I'm going to be a leader someday? 

Frank - Well, I was born, when my dad was a dairy farmer in Wisconsin. So he had an eighth grade education. I don't have a lot of farm blood in me. When I was nine months old, he moved off to go to college, Calvin College, and then on to seminary. So when I was young, I just sort of grew up in a home in which my dad was going to school, my dad was preparing to be a pastor. So you know that that was sort of my route. So I could have been a farm kid. And I ended up being the son of a pastor. And at an early age, I began to think that God was calling me to be a pastor. It's kind of an interesting story. Some people have really dramatic stories of how they were called to be a leader in church ministry. But for me, it was the fact that my parents, my mother, especially bought me a little matching suit. When my dad went out to preach, I had a little suit when I was probably five years old. And people would say, Oh, you look just like your dad. And my mother would say, and what do you want to be when you grow up? And I would say, on cue, well, I'm going to be a pastor someday. And everyone would say, Oh, that's wonderful. I actually have a picture of me standing when I'm about five years old, I must have been on a chair, I'm standing behind the pulpit with my hands raised in benediction. So at an early age, I began to pray God help me someday become a pastor, but don't make me be a missionary. I actually prayed that for years as a kid.

Bruce - Why not a missionary? 

Frank - I thought, you know, at the time, my concept of what a missionary was, you went to Africa, you know, when they came back, they would show pictures of huge snakes. I wasn't a snake fan. And I thought, you know, this would be a terrible life to be dragged off by God to some other country. So I just wanted to be like dad. Later in life, my mother would introduce me, she was always proud. I was a pastor, and she'd say, you know, he became a pastor, and we never even pushed it. And I thought, what thing did you grow up in mother, but that was my call. I was called into ministry early on, sort of through the manipulations of a mother and God uses all kinds of ways. But then when I was in high school in fact Bruce, you and I had a similar experience. We signed up for a summer ministry program. And my dad had been serving large churches, in his ministry, churches that were sort of internal. He was a great pastor, but he sort of all the focus was internal in the church. He worked hard, all those things. But church was sort of boring to me. It was, we never penetrated our neighborhood at all. It was just sort of like a little fortress Church. The world's a bad place. We're safe here; it is Christian. So you and I both went on our summer ministry program to Ogden, Utah. And there I met a very different kind of Pastor leader than my dad. And that was as fiery redheaded preacher called Gary Hart. And I stayed in a home where the family that I stayed with for weeks and weeks and weeks, they were new Christians. They were messy. The church was filled with all these variety of people were there a day or 2 and he drops us on the corner and he says, "talk to people about Jesus." He took us down to the toughest parts of town where there were a lot of alcoholics. People actually passed out in the street and he said, Tell them about Jesus. And I came home from that changed, where I said, I want to be a pastor. But I want to be a pastor like that. A church that's focused outward. So that was the original sort of time in my life, I think when my calling was confirmed. And I started thinking about the options of what kind of leader can a person be when they're a pastor? 

Bruce - So I know that our training was very much to be the chaplain, taking care of people when they're sick preaching on Sunday, maybe teaching a class here or to to high school kids or whatever. And when did you figure out that you were called to be a leader within the church? 

Frank - I think that was a sort of gradual process. I mean, I guess everybody knows, that's going to become a pastor, that there's going to be some leadership involved in this. But the model I had of my dad was that leadership was sort of focused inward. You preach good sermons, you show up when people are in need. But our the leadership had nothing to do with really moving out into the neighborhood, our church, the churches that I grew up in, really had nothing to do with people that lived one block away from the church building. It was sort of us so as I entered ministry, I I sort of fell into the pattern of my father, I think in my first church, it was a rural church. And I was run ragged, just making sermons, visiting people in times of need. It was a small rural church that really expected the pastor was hired to do about everything. So I was just run ragged. I would be exhausted at the end of a Sunday. And after four years, in this wonderful church, I just had to go. So I moved from there to a small church, in Jacksonville, Florida, sort of a missional church that hadn't gone well, there were about 30 people there. And I learned a lot about leadership there, especially about what not to do, because all the models of my youth just didn't work there. This was a diverse group of people. There wasn't a church of our denomination within about 100 miles. Some of the things I thought, you know, you should just automatically do didn't make any sense there. So I began there to at least start thinking about, maybe I should lead in a different way. Maybe I should learn some new skills. But then, the third church I went to was really the church where I spent most of my ministry it was my life calling. I spent 25 years in Holland, Michigan at a church. And it was really there that I bumped into several people that pushed me. One was a young woman in our church who was involved in business. She was an incredible leader. And she kept telling me, Frank, you are not just a preacher, you are a leader, you have to take us somewhere. And so she just shoved all kinds of leadership books my way. And then also at that time, I began attending every year, the Willow Creek conference with Bill Hybels. And he was a great inspiration for me, teaching me that pastors are leaders. So through just a slow process increasing, I became aware of the fact that the church should be going somewhere. The church is not just a maintenance kind of position, the church is going somewhere, there's always a new place that God wants to bring a church. So I began to increasingly see my role as not only a teacher, but critically as a leader. So I began to read everything I could on leadership, I began to be mentored by some great leaders. And you know, over time, I think I picked up some skills. But I did become aware of the fact that, like it or not, I was called to lead this growing church. 

Bruce - So you're getting involved with a leadership process and you interact with the culture there and who's going to change and develop a vision? What were some of the visionary things that came out of your leadership, particularly the last church or when you're in Jacksonville? 

Frank - Well, I think I'll comment on my last church because it was really a long process in which the church really was transformed over those years. I learned first of all, how important structure is and so I think I led the church through a change in leadership structure. I really kind of inherited the system from the denomination in which I was a part in here's this elder board and a deacon board and then there's some pastors are a pastor. And I quickly began to see that this church had a very dysfunctional leadership structure. It was a huge church, council of elders and deacons and elders meetings and there were deacons meetings, there was an executive team that met and it was just chaos. And they're sort of an anti-pastor-as-a-leader mentality as well. One of the lead elders told me "as far as I'm concerned, you shouldn't even be able to vote around here." So when I came there, you know, the pastor was almost the enemy when it came to making decisions leading us somewhere. So, over a process of years, we began to evaluate the structure as the church was growing, we came to the conclusion that wasn't bad people in positions that was a bad structure, not bad people, but bad structure. And I led them through a process in which we brought in other leaders from churches that had grown. And they talked about how they had to rethink. We just, I didn't push, but I gave them lots of information over process of about a year, we completely restructured the church, which made it possible to get decisions made quickly, capable people were in positions with clear lines of authority. And I can't tell you how much the Church changed. When we move toward clear definitions of leadership, the church got rid of that big stamp pad that says no on it, no leaders go, Nope, we're not going to do that. Nope. And we were led by staff, and governed by elders. So I think changing structure was a critical point for me as a leader in that congregation. And I would say it is one of the two or three things that accounted for the ability to grow as large as we did, which was about 1,400 people. 

Bruce - Well I know too, that one of the key things you did was keep vision in front of people, at least in later years, powerfully. And maybe you can just share some of that some of the vision that you had, and how did you roll it out to people? How do you keep reminding people? How did you keep people focused on vision, we're gonna be talking about that later. As far as in the course we're gonna be talking about what it means to write a vision statement, how you develop vision, but just share a little bit about your experience. 

Frank - Well, I'll begin by saying that I believe that, in general, churches want to be led somewhere. Church should be an adventure, right? This gathering of people who are passionate disciples of Jesus, this should be this should be an adventure, right? This should be more than about lawn mowers, which one we're going to buy, what kind of computer we're going to get? What about putting on an addition? All those kinds of things that can be very divisive. So I think that in general, churches, and members of churches, are eager to be led in a way in which they say God is taking us somewhere. And I think in nature, churches that I've experienced, tended to be a cyclical. So you know, every year they would kind of go around and round. So it's this time of year. So we do this, and then it's, you know, Advent, and we do that. And then it's the summer and we do this, and you just every year tried to do it a little better than you did it the year before. But there's just a sense of churches sort of spinning round and round and round. And I became convinced that churches should at least have a part of their experience being linear, we are going somewhere. And so what I began to do is, each year, we would kick off our fall season with a focus banquet. And we invested lots of resources in planning this focus banquet. And we invited all adults in the congregation together. And so we would say this is where we believe God is leading us now to do that. with a clear conscience. You have to be waiting on God, you have to be talking with others, you have to have a pulse of what's happening, your finger on the pulse of what's happening. So months ahead of time, we begin praying and planning and the congregation would gather 4-500 people with a sense of excitement. Where's God taking us in the next year? So not just go round and round? But where are we going? And we had all kinds of powerful experiences. By doing that, you know, this year, we feel that God is calling us to be more fully a house of prayer throughout the year. That's what we would focus on over and over again. What does it mean, what changes need to happen to become more fully a church of prayer? We had one year in which we introduced the concept of hitting the streets. We are way too ingrown. We had built a new facility, a lot of focus was internally as a church, we need to move out of this building and hit the streets. So you know, we sold that kind of vision. And then throughout the year, we give all kinds of opportunities and training. How do we get out of the building and into the community that God's placed us in and perhaps the most powerful focus of events in which we we were taken in a new place was what we call the year of Jubilee. I had gotten away by myself. We had just paid off the debt on our new facility, and we're getting ready to build phase two. And you know, I felt a little guilty all the money that we'd spent as a church. I knew one thing we would do at the focus banquet, we would burn the mortgage. But I didn't know what else we would do. So I got away for three or four days. And I stumbled upon that Old Testament concept of Jubilee, you know, this radical, every 50 years, God's people were to do something radical: land is redistributed. Land is given rest; slaves are set free. There was a radical generosity. So I thought, what would that look like to declare a year of Jubilee at the church, I served Calvary Church in which we would put a pause on the building program's second phase. And instead of a capital stewardship campaign, where we'd raise money for our building, we would say make a one year plan. And in that year, we will put up structures all over the world where people can afford it, but they need a place. So 370,000 was committed to that we built seven buildings around the world, I also encouraged every family to have at least one person that would go somewhere in the world where they would see a world in need a world in poverty. And what happened in that one year of Jubilee, God sabotaged us. When the year was done, we said, why have a year of Jubilee when we can be a church of Jubilee. So we tore up the glossy brochures of the phase two, we decided in comparison to so much of the world, we had great facilities. And we began to really radically commit large amounts of our resources. When I left, almost 800 people have gone somewhere in the world and a place of need, we've given away millions of dollars, we had a budget of 1.6 million we gave 6, 7, $800,000 a year away, that was a huge thing that came out of saying, we are not just going to go round and round in a cyclical fashion. But we're going to be open to where is God challenging us and taking us. And I think that night of the focus banquet became the most anticipated evening in the life of the church, because Christians love to have a sense that God is taking them to a new place. So that to me was so important. That's a heart of leadership. Where does God want to take this group of people? How do we challenge and call them to it? And then in the process? How do we keep reminding them over and over why we're doing it? And why it makes a difference? Good stuff. There was fun. 

Bruce - Tell me about some times where you thought you had the right idea. And it turned out to be a bust, it was a failure. And how and how do you handle failure? Because that's part of leadership, too. You don't always make the right call every single time. 

Frank - Right. and I think that a lot of as I look back on ministry. I think one of the failures that I did was I had a concept that if I was a really nice guy, if I led really well, if I explained really clearly, if I brought all of us along together, we would be able to change as a church from being a rather ingrown church to a very external missional church, affecting our neighborhood and many parts of the world, that I could do that in a way in which everybody would cheer. And it was very painful for me to discover that it was not always possible to bring everybody along. And there were there were times when I know I disappointed people, people thought we were going in the wrong direction. There were people that felt with our push to be missional and engaged, we were ignoring our own people. There was once a time when about 150 people left enmass, when a staffer left, those were bitter hard times. And I learned that try as I could, there are times in which leadership doesn't always take everybody along. And that was very painful for me. Those are the most painful memories I had when I and leaders with good intentions, that God is calling us in this direction. And then there were others that were like, No, we're not going there. And it created problems that are eventually just left. That was really painful for me. 

Bruce - And I know you, like all us within the leadership anywhere head critics occasionally would send you an email, note, letter, or for a tome. How did you handle the whole idea of critics? 

Frank - Well, I think a couple of things I learned over the years one is that all criticism hurts, no matter how positive it is. You know when you're getting criticism when you're giving criticism to a staff, no matter how nicely you word criticism, all criticism was. But there is criticism that deeply wounds unnecessarily. So I tried to keep myself open to criticism, and I'd be too deeply wounded by it. I tried to find where's the nugget of truth because often criticism, even if it's something, someone who's really opposed to you, often there's a kernel of truth in this criticism, try to find that. But I came to believe every I cannot make everybody happy. It's not my job to make everybody happy. And criticism comes with leadership, because you may say, we're going to go right, God's calling us to go right. Our church thinks all should go, right. And there may be people who will want to go left with everything they have. So criticism was hard. It's the worst part of leadership for me was the kind of criticism right people say, My friends call you Hitler. I mean that, if that doesn't wound you, there's something wrong with it. That an elderly lady in the church had a big box in her backseat of a car, someone said, What's that for? She said, that's a coffin for our pastor. So, and I hear I, once again, just a really nice guy, leadership, when you say we're going this direction, and people move in that direction together. There are times when people stay behind. And it's very painful, it's very hard for me, because I don't like conflict. I can't understand anyone that likes it does come at times, and you can be misunderstood. Those are the painful things. I will say that, you know, letters that weren't signed, or people that said nasty things or groups that seemed to gather to attack what was happening, happen mostly in the first 10 years. And as I learned more about leadership, and as a church became more shaped by that leadership, as the church began to move as a body and a missional direction, people either began to embrace it or left. And my last 10 or 15 years it was, it was just a very different situation. I think you can out last often, critics, and some of your critics can become dear friends. I had a person, the person who told me if I had my way, you wouldn't be able to vote around here, when I left, hugged me and wept and said, I love you. So it's a tough business being a leader. But you do the best you can, learn from your mistakes. And do not allow criticism to paralyze you. Because it is easier to say I guess I'll just take care of everyone and forget about pushing, let's just do the round and round. Just keep everybody happy. That's right. We keep everybody happy. But I think in the long run, biblical leadership brings people to wonderful new places. So it's worth doing. 

Bruce - Hey, this has been a treat for me. We've talked about this stuff for a lot of years together already. But being a leader, the themes that Frank has brought out today comes with a cost, we're going to consider that later in the lecture. It comes to knowing yourself well, and knowing where your strengths are, but it comes with the idea that you've got to be and choose to be a leader. And that involves finding out where God was calling you to go and calling you to take an organization or a church, and then leading there with God's strength, and with the corporate help of the people. And it's gonna take a while. It doesn't all happen immediately, unless something supernatural happens. So we're going to continue talking about leadership and begin talking about culture and the way things are done here that we'll have to change. Frank referred to a couple of those situations as we move on in this class.