Video Transcript: Vision Introduction and Definition

I hope you enjoyed that experience, something from our history, but a vision that still remains today. In fact, it's fascinating at the 50 year acknowledgement or anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination. People are pointing to that dream saying isn't reality, people pointing to  that vision saying, have we made that vision reality, they're still talking about that today. And  the success or lack of success of the movement to create racial equality in this country is  

judged by that vision statements 50 years later, it's an incredible thing. And people are able  to quantify the fact that opportunities for African Americans have improved in our country,  their opportunities for education, that that many African Americans are now mayors in large  cities in the southern United States. They're governors of countries. And when Barak Obama  was elected president in the United States, it was a banner moment to say, yes, we're moving that direction, but then they would come up with all these evidences that we still aren't there. So powerful vision. Now, as we look at that 250, some 1000 people hearing that that day, but  repeated to millions and millions there are, what was it? Well, it's the images that he used, it's the fact that this was a way of speaking to the hearts of people gathering up their dreams for  giving it articulation so that maybe they couldn't have said it. But they were able to say it was specific, clear. It appealed the emotions, all those things I pointed out last week, but what was his vision? What was the statement that has made this such a lasting, lasting icon in the  history of the United States? In regards to racial relations here, inter relational relations here  in the United States? Well, his vision was simple. I want racial equality. Now one of the  questions to ask with vision is what aspects of culture need to change? When you start talking about your vision statement, what you see is the future you got to acknowledge that all that  stuff we've talked about with cultures, some aspects of that culture are going to have to  change because sometimes culture becomes less relevant within the church or Christian  organizations. And so we're no longer relevant to the culture around us. And so we get  marginalized and we talked, we get pushed aside. And so if we're going to become more  relevant, we have to find ways to express our desires for the future that people can identify  with. But it will involve changing aspects of culture. I talked about some back many sessions  ago. Now, let's talk about some of those things like changing rituals in the church, somethings might have to change that way. Some use of space might have to change. These kinds of  things may have to change well, what would have to change for Martin Luther King's vision to  become reality? Now that has made it difficult to actually see racial equality in this country. In  fact right after a Martin Luther King was killed in 1968. There were riots throughout the main  every major cities except Cleveland, Indiana, had a riot of various kinds. And I remember that  those as a kid, I remember that they are people that sense that the world is falling apart or  being torn apart in one way, shape, or form. Bombs, fires being excuse me, buildings being  fire bombed, variety of activities that then just people rose up in anger against well, they  established a presidential commission, did President Johnson at that time, in order to say  what are the roots of these riots? How do we get to the people are so unhappy that they're  willing to create such destruction, often to their own detriment in order to get attention?  What's the root of it? And what do we got to do to change it? And so there was a great report  that was written. And it was written with primarily white men, being the ones who were on the commission. And they said the root cause of the riots in this country is racial. is white  prejudice against blacks. Racial prejudice. And so the discussion has been that was written 50 years ago, as well. the discussion has been, has that changed? Well, maybe in some small  ways, but they're still they're still prejudiced. We all have prejudices we do. Prejudice is simply looking negatively at a different person or group of people based on some characteristic. You  know, years ago, when I was in high school we used to we used to spend time talking about  dumb blonde jokes. In other words, we characterize a whole group of people unfairly. Women  who are blond by telling jokes about how dumb they were, it was a horrible thing to do when I  look back about it, but that was that was part of prejudice, prejudice that was finding an  expression in the jokes. Well, that's prejudice, I'm looking negatively at a group of people. But  racism is something different. It's prejudice plus power. In other words, when people in power  are using that power to negatively impact another group of people. Then you've got  challenges. A Pastor's group that I am part of gets together to pray and to pray for  organizations in our community recently had a group in that was simply a group that was 

trying to create a greater racial reconciliation. In the area where I live now, there haven't been huge overt problems, nothing like back then. But recognizing that it's there and so we've got  to talk to some of these people and say in a biracial woman, he talks about trying to get along in a certain part of a city and found that the rules were different there than for just two miles  away, or opportunities that were created like that the Hispanic who said, you know, what,  there's certain certain communities, if I come in, and I try to buy a home, there's gonna be all  sorts of forces that are going to try to keep me against that. It's horrible that that exists today. I'm just trying to point out that there are some huge cultural things that have to change, and  have been changing over the 50 years. Unfortunately, we've taken some steps back in this  past couple of years in this country as some of the some of the ugliness of white supremacy  has raised it's head again, but I just want to point that out to you that if that dream is going to become a reality, if that vision is going to become a reality, reality, there are some aspects of  culture that have to change. Now, I'm just gonna put up a list of some people here. Hopefully  you're familiar with most of them. Mother Teresa. Catholic nun, went to India and rescued  people off the streets and people with leprosy and cared for them. A Bill Hybels leader of a  church from about 25,000 people in Chicago, Illinois, multi site church. He's been incredibly  influential in teaching leadership, across generations. And every summer in August, he has a  leadership summit they call where leaders gather together to learn more about becoming  better leaders, we found out that you know possibly here he has some great weaknesses as  well, as I mentioned in previous setting and previous lecture, Andy Stanley is the senior  pastor of North Point Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia. Again, somebody who's a great leader,  and teaches leadership in a variety of places. He's on television and got a podcast. He is  somebody has been very influential within the kingdom in my day, Henry Ford, historical  figure, first person to provide construction of automobiles on an assembly line, Bill Clinton, a  previous president of the United States. Somebody who came in with a certain vision about  what should the United States look like? When you think of them? What are some of the  words you've used to describe what their vision was? What was it that drove them? What?  What did they want to see happen in the future? Well, for Mother Teresa, it was, Well, I got a  typo there. I see. No one died alone, and unloved. She was concerned about that. And so she  wanted everybody to experience the love of Jesus. And so she began to talk to various young  people, mostly young women, but young men as well, about being part of the hands and feet  of Jesus to those who are dying. And hundreds responded, because they saw this vision of  caring about somebody, and they had in their heart, a desire to care about somebody  meaningfully, and here was a leader who made a vision for them. Created the way. a Bill  Hybels back in the days when churches had started to lose influence in our country decided to create a different kind of church. He did it with a high school group. He was a high school  youth pastor, and challenged them to start a new kind of church. This church would be a  church for seekers. Their their vision statement mission statement was that they want to  attract seekers, people who are seeking something about God who are seeking spirituality,  and then turn them into fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. But the people caught on that  there are people seeking everything about their church is defined by that vision of we want to see seekers come to faith and become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. So the worship  service reflects that their facilities reflect that. How do we create a place where seekers can  come. And so if you were go to a Sunday service early on, and you're a Christian, you won't  probably wouldn't recognize any of the songs. In fact, they know very little congregational  singing, at least they did back then. Because that they wanted people to be able to spectate  more, not reengaged, because they wanted to give people a message and so that vision,  define their behaviors and their actions. But people bought in and the church bought in. Andy  Stanley, where unbeliever loves to attend. That's his vision for a church, and particularly  where unbelieving men love to attend. And so that's the way they built their church. That's  the way they build their worship. So we they define the physical plan. That's the way they,  they do things. Because there's a vision of having unbelievers, not just people who are  seeking God, but people who are just unbelieving, and maybe are cynical about Christianity,  but that they'll still love to come here. And eventually, as they love to come, they will  encounter Jesus Christ, Henry Ford, his vision was, was clear. He wanted to build a car that 

anybody could afford. Now that meant several changes in the culture, one, you know, cars  were built one by one by hand by just a couple of people. And so that had to change. There  had to be a factory, there had to be an assembly line built. But the culture had to change too.  So automatically, he began paying people far more than anybody else, in order to come to  work for him, because he wanted these people to be able to afford to buy one of the cars they were building. That was unheard of back then. But it began to change the culture. And it  began to create unions and it created just a huge change in culture that is still, in some  respects alive today in the United States, Coca Cola, their vision was very simple. They  wanted everyone in the world to be able to drink a coke. And so that affected all of their  decisions about resourcing and distribution and where their factories create this stuff. What  about their shipping department? All kinds of decisions had to be made to say, Are we  attaining that vision? So all of that goes into just the examples of visions and how that vision  will affect the way people interact with culture, and how resources start being drawn to  resources, people resources, but money resources drawn to that preferable future, at least as  far as the company goes. You know Coca Cola, I don't care whether they reach their mission  or not, but where people like Mother Teresa and Bill Hybels and Andy Stanley, those are the  kinds of people you say yeah,I want this to see. Want this to happen, because it's an  important vision. So what is this thing called Vision? Here are just some definitions. Aubrey  Malphurs, in a book called Vision For Ministry said "I define an institutional vision as a clear  and challenging picture of the future of a ministry as its leadership believes it can and must  be." Now you'll know some words in there picture, a clear and challenging picture. It's future  oriented. And it can but must be this is something that someone believes a group of people  believe is so important that it must be and we're willing to sacrifice for that to happen. Here's  George Barna and the power of vision is his simplest definition is "foresight with insight based on hindsight." I like that. But I foresight again, is future oriented with insight. In other words,  somebody who has looked at the culture, both inside the organization and the broader culture in which that organization exists, and begun to define a preferable future based on that. And  then looking at previous experience hindsight. Now, here's the way he expanded that vision a  bit. Said, "vision for ministry is a clear mental picture of a preferable future imparted by God  to His chosen servants, and is based upon an accurate understanding of God, Self, and  circumstances." Now, again, just note some things. It's, it's a picture of a preferable future,  imparted by God, chosen servant leaders and others, and it's based on an accurate  understanding, etc. But but it's that future picture. John Maxwell was a prolific writer, on  leadership and he said, this, "a vision is a clear picture of what the leader sees his or her  group being or doing." Again, it's a clear picture. And it's based on what that group is going to be being or doing in the future. And so it's something that draws people people have now in  all of these definitions, there are some common elements. First of all, it's future oriented. A  vision. Next time we're going to get into more of this differentiation, differentiation between a  mission and a vision. But the vision is something that's focused on the future, what will be  sometimes people and organizations will tie it to a date. In fact, they'll tie their vision to a  date, National Community Church led by Mark Madison, in Washington, DC has a vision, they  decided that they're going to be a church that goes to movie theaters, that's where they hold  their worship services, they rent movie theaters. And so their vision is that by 2020, they'll  have 20,000 people meeting in X number of theaters around the Washington area. But  beyond that to country's to cities around that area. So that that's a vision that's tied to a  specific date. Some visions are not tied to a specific date. Now, when Martin Luther King Jr.  said, I have a dream, he didn't say that by 1972. We're going to have this wasn't a time  limited one, but depends on what the vision is. We're going to talk about short and long term  visions at some point here that you need both a short term goals that you're attaining, and  longer term. But right now, it's future oriented. I love the story about Walt Disney, the creator  of Disneyland and Disney World and the Disney television channel and that sort of thing.  Here's a statue of him at Disneyland in Southern California with Mickey Mouse. The story is  told that when Disneyland was dedicated, Walt had already died. And somebody said to Walt's widow, as they were celebrating this beautiful place. "Oh, wouldn't it be great if Walt could  see this?" And Walter, Walt Disney's wife turned to him and said, "oh, he did. That's why it's 

here." The idea of a picture, he had this picture of a place that would be a happy place, the  happiest place on earth. He called it and he wanted families to be able to come and, and put  aside all the cares of life for a little while and, and enjoy each other. And there was a future  vision. They said, What if we could create this thing that created all of these wonderful  stories, like do Sleeping Beauty, if we could have a place where people could come and  experience these children's stories, but experience them in rich life Huckleberry Finn, I think,  on the island now that you can just do this exploring, take rides you can eat, you can just  spend a day or days just rejoicing, that was his vision he saw it, and it became reality. And  now they're Disney World and a variety of Disney organizations throughout the world, as a  result of his vision, to create a happy place for people he saw it. So it's future oriented. It's a  mental picture. Anytime you talk about a vision, you've got to be thinking of picture. In fact,  you've got to be thinking about two things, really. It's a picture and a passion. So it's a picture, you got to use picture language. Now, when I mentor young men, in preaching, one of the  things we talk about is that within a sermon, you got to have a certain kinds of things. One,  it's got to be therapeutic, it's got to be, in other words, related to the needs of the people, and somehow touches their hearts, because it's something that they recognize is true for them.  It's got to be unconventional, in some way that gets gets attention. And so you know it may  be that you're sitting on a stool instead of standing behind the pulpit, or maybe that you  wander around or whatever, but there's got to be unconventional or, or the way you order  points or whatever, that it's got to be unconventional. It's got to be filled with passion. Passion is vitally important, not just a picture language, but the passion that goes with it. And so  they're creating a mental picture, you've got to when you're thinking of vision, what is the  picture of what this is going to look like? And we're going to look at some variety of  statements in the next section, just trying to define mission statements, and how well would  they score and then we're going to look at vision statements after that in the next session,  just to try to identify what's a good mental picture of the future? What are those things and  that grab your attention? Because first of all, the picture of Yeah, that's a worthy thing to  happen. And secondly, a faith in risk, this must be a passionate about it. And then another  common element is it's got to be achievable. In other words, it's not something that you can  present to someone that they say, Hey, that'll never happen. That'll never happen.  Sometimes we in the church can do that, you know, we can create this huge picture for  somebody there where where people will shut it down, because they just say that can't  happen. For one consultant that came into the dying church from my denomination and they  were down to about 75 people gathered on a Sunday morning. And their resources have been  declining for years and years and years as far as the financial resources and the people  resources in order to do the work of ministry. And so the average age was probably in the 60s  or 70s. And so they were just experiencing this limitation in their life and ministry, and they  hired a consultant to help them work through this idea of vision, what's the preferable future  for our congregation. And unfortunately, the leadership came up with this unbelievable a  vision of becoming a church of 500 people at these kinds of facilities and the folks that were  there just to not were too tired. And they made a decision to die. And if you talk to them  today, at church, as I did to one elder in that church, their future is death, they know it, but  says, you know, the average age is now about 75 in that congregation. And so we love each  other, we get together, down to about 40. And you know, every year, every month, someone  dies. And eventually, the last one will close the doors and sell the place and give the money  to some Kingdom cause. But that's become their vision is a good death, which is not  necessarily all that bad. You know, we can talk about that for a long time, too. But but the  vision was just too great. The picture was too big for them to say, Yes, let's go. Let's go. Now,  when you read the Bible, I'm going to be quoting Nehemiah a great deal over the next few  sessions. Because Nehemiah just caught hundreds very well, he was able to create a vision  that was identifiable, that was clear, it was precise. It was picture language, and it was a  passionate, passionate desire to fix a real need within that community. And it was achievable.  Now, you know, over these next weeks, I've been talking about the leader for weeks now. And then the culture for weeks. Those are all very important things. But vision is going to be the  most important thing probably, as you interact with your culture, in whether you're able to 

lead effectively or not. What is your vision? How is it connected? People are aching for good  visions these days. Now, here's a picture of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, back during  presidential election, when these two are running against each other. There was this moment  in the debate. And Bill Clinton was defining his vision for the future. And so he's talking about  this is what I'd like to see America become, I'd like to see a place where poor are being lifted  out of poverty. They're given an opportunity to learn to work, they're given opportunities for  education, they're given opportunities for jobs that are meaningful, and, and they become  meaningful employees, as employees, and they learn the dignity of work and, and I have this  place that prosperity is going to be part of the future of our country, that people will be able  to come here and they will still see us. And then he is drawing a vision for the world. They see a world at peace. And George H. W. Bush took this classic pose and responded by saying  "There you go with that vision thing again." In other words, he was downplaying the idea of  vision. And, well, Bill Clinton got elected, George Bush did not. People want vision. They're  aching for it. And so as you think about this preferred vision for the future, know that it's  going to become the star that you steer by. It's going to become that North Star that you  check against. That people will check against to say, how are we doing? Are we living up to  our vision? Is that still pulling us forward? And it's going to be something that's going to be  powerful for your ministry, and your life, whatever, whatever leadership situation you're in.  And so we're going to spend a lot of time talking about vision and how to create a meaningful  vision for your area but now started thinking about that in context of Martin Luther King and  these other things that we said today, what's your vision?