Okay, we're going to continue now we're talking about developing the mission statement, we talked about how was the vision itself created, we talked about some characteristics of the mission statement. But now I want to get down to some of the nuts and bolts about some things to keep in mind as you try to put it down on paper in such a way that it will be engaging with the people who are going to listen to your vision.

Now we are in that section reminder on the vision of preferred future, vision becomes the star you steer by not a simple map to be followed. In other words, it doesn't lay out every step of the way doesn't say, Oh, this is how we're going to do it here. And how we're going to do it here doesn't do that at all. But it says, Here, here's the star we steer by, we're going this direction, this is where we want to be. 

Now, I have chosen one process that I'm going to just kind of work out with you over the next few sessions. It's a process developed by a consulting agency that is not a Christian consulting agency, but they have some wonderful resources for talking about vision and creating a strategic plan, which is the section we're going to move into next week. And so there is there a website you can look on there. But here's the model that they use it's saying, you know, "creating a an impactful strategic plan starts with your vision." The vision is the thing that is overall, what you are doing. And so this is an important part later on, we're going to get how the values change and focus areas and organizational goals and goals in the various areas of the church. We'll get into that stuff later. But just to show you this now, we'll be coming back over the next several sessions, about how our vision is what drives us our vision is what we do. And then that defines the rest of it. So the vision statement is a very important statement. 

So having said all of that, how do you create a vision statement? Well the leader and the guiding coalition come together. Now, we talked about that last time, a little bit out, how you know, it's not just the leader unless it is a strong natural leader, but some other people that come together with you that you help you do this, that help you define what that vision is. Now, I am not a strong natural leader. And so I will always find it helpful to get a group of key leaders together from the congregation I am part of, because I happen to be part of a church organization with key leaders. These are people who I know are desiring of something new; they become dissatisfied with the status quo, or they're the kind of people who see the opportunities that are coming in the future. And so together, we've worked on this sort of thing as we talk about the vision statement. And then with that group, you know, I look at the present reality, as we talked about last time, we define that to a great degree. And then we start to move on in developing a statement. But we only do that with prayer. 

Now, I've mentioned prayer so many times in this I want to mention that once again here. When you look through scripture, you find that prayer was incredibly important in the forming of particularly visionary times. Acts 6, a time of prayer in commissioning those first deacons. When you get on later, Acts 13. The church had really just expanded just a little way that was in Judea, and it got to Samaria and the city of Antioch. And there it was, while they were praying and fasting, the Lord said, set apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I've called them. So that calling a mission going out into the world, especially into the Greek world, the Roman world of that day came because of prayer. It was a vision that we don't know how the Holy Spirit spoke it. We don't know how God said that to set apart Barnabas and Saul for me, but it was an answer to their prayer and their time of fasting. Now, we should talk about fasting another time, perhaps. But it's a way to emphasize prayer emphasize the need to take us away from the stuff physically that keeps us engaged with what we're engaged with. 

And so somehow, as we're looking at our vision statement, and we want to develop this vision statement, we've got to be in prayer together. And I came from a tradition that prayed at the beginning of a meeting, sometimes at the end, but not always. So that was my tradition. And I had to learn later that to engage people in thoughtful prayer was very important. And so we learned to pray as we were working on vision together. We prayed at the beginning of these we prayed in the middle of meetings we prayed in small groups who prayed as a whole group we we realized that we wanted to know where God was calling us to go and so we eager to listen. And that involves prayer. 

Acts 15 is another time where there was a huge moment in the Church where they could go various directions, you know, they could go and take the direction of making all the new believers Jewish, or they could say on God's doing a new thing. And so they come together. But if you look at Acts 14, the setting for that was Paul and Barnabas coming back from a mission trip, and, and with prayer and fasting, establishing leaders in all the churches within the towns where they had been. And so a prayer was part of that. And so they get back to Antioch. And they find that a group of converts were Pharisees before the conversion to Christianity, are telling the people that they've got to become Jewish, they've got to keep all the Jewish festivals, they've got to become circumcised to become fully Jewish in that way. They've got to keep all the Sabbath laws, the 613 laws about the Sabbath, they've got to do all of these things in regard to how to eat now. And da, tada, tada. And the church is called to make a decision about this. And Barnabas and Saul are facing that group in Antioch and saying this: I don't think is what God wants us to do. And so it ends up in Jerusalem. And it's fascinating, they have a discussion together. But they come out saying it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. It was a result of Barnabas and Saul, praying with people. The Antioch church praying and seeing a new vision, and the people in Jerusalem now catching on to it and saying, yes, that's where God is going. 

Now, there's that cautionary word there. And that is a group think when it gets down to writing a vision statement. The critical question to answer in a vision statement is where are we going? And sometimes when you get a group together, it's like, everybody puts on their English 101 hat or something, and they're trying to craft something that covers every eventuality. In fact, Dan Keith is a consultant here in the United States, with business and he describes in one of his video blogs, what makes vision statements die and become ineffective. He said, "What usually happens is that the leader will get together a group of people to talk about a vision statement, and they'll begin to edit it," he says, "so there's this group that has this vision, and the guy comes, he owns the vision parlor, the pizza parlor, they're just starting out. And he says, Here it is, our vision is to serve the tastiest blank pizza in Wake County," swear word there. 

Well, the group interacts with this, and of course, their first reaction is, "well, you can't say that blank Word. And so we got to take that out. So "our vision is to serve the tastiest pizza in Wake County." Okay, now, that's still a vision, it's future and gives us direction for how we're going to go. But then somebody will say, "Well, wait a minute. I don't like that word serve it. It's just it's servile. And it's just doesn't present what we want. So let's make a present, our vision is to present the tastiest pizza in Wake County." And then somebody will say, "Well, you know what, we don't just do pizza. We also do some sandwiches, we do some calzones, we do some other things here salads says. "So maybe we shouldn't have pizza, we should make the vision statement, our mission to present the highest quality Italian foods in Wake County." And then somebody says, "Well you know, but if we just talk about food, you could probably talk about a Greek salad that they serve. And so it shouldn't be just Italian food," they said, "Maybe we should look at the fact that we don't just serve food here. We have these booths, we've got these game areas that people can play. And so we're not really talking about food, or we're talking about dining, but it's not really dining. And so somebody suggests our mission is to present the highest quality entertainment solutions for families in Wake County." And then somebody will say, "Oh, wait a minute, we forgot the word integrity. And that's very important in our day. So we've got to throw that word in there. So our mission is to present with integrity, the highest quality entertainment solutions for families in Wake County." 

So this is just a warning to say, when you're putting these together, and you've got a guiding coalition, that's a word we're going to talk about later that you don't just do groupthink. You charge some people, certainly the leaders should be part of that group of people small group, maybe engaged with some people are used to writing and writing well, and engage them to come back with it and not try to edit it and describe every situation that could possibly be faced in the future. And then you'll have a better vision statement. 

So there we looked at this characteristics of a good vision statement that it's clear. It's challenging. It involves change. It's a mental picture and it's future oriented. In other words, it's achievable. Now what I'd like to look do is look at some bad vision statements as far as they don't give you a whole lot of excitement right here's or the checklists are let's look at those checklists Excuse me. Is it future? is it directional? In other words, we aren't there yet. Is it audacious? Is it about a big thing that's going to happen? Is it descriptive? This statement, that paints a picture. Exxon Mobil statement Corp, "the Exxon Mobil Corporation is committed to being the world's premier petroleum and petrochemical company." Bah. who cares, right? And what does that mean to being the world's premier petroleum and petrochemical company? Does that mean they're gonna have most of the business? They're gonna gobble up everybody else? What is it? What does it mean that doesn't really give a whole lot of direction. And that's usually given as one of the examples of a pretty bad vision statement. Now we've looked at some other ones, you know, that we talked last time about, you know, how you can change these to make them future oriented to make them exciting. You know, this one is from Redeemer Presbyterian with Tim Keller, we talked about that how you could make that so much more exciting. But you know, here's one this I think this actually this came out of a sermon by Rick Warren at Saddleback Church, in Southern California. But this is one where a lot of groupthink it looks like happened, right? I know, he was trying to present a vision for the future. But he said, it's a dream of a place where the hurting, the depressed, frustrated and confused can find love, acceptance, help, hope, forgiveness, guidance and encouragement. You can almost picture a group getting together and saying, you know, we want to place we're hurting people can be healed. And somebody say, "Well, you know, that's hurting those who are depressed and what what about people are frustrated? Confused people? You know they need a place and well okay, we want them to find acceptance here. Well, no, we don't want just acceptance. We want love. We want guidance for them. We want encouragement to them. And well, it's the dream of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with hundreds of 1000s of residents of South Orange County. Oh, that's good. To dream of welcoming 20,000 members into the fellowship of the church. And then family loving, learning, laughing and living in harmony together." Trying to describe the whole church kind of situation, whole church experience. Again, "it's a dream of developing people with spiritual maturity. And this is how we're gonna do a biblical study small group seminars, retreats bible school for our members." Again, somebody saying, "Okay, this, oh that's exciting, we're gonna develop people to spiritual maturity, this is yeah but, we really should describe how." So this is just an example of what can happen with groupthink. And you know what it could be if we just took certain phrases out or as I exception, as I suggested last time. 

Now, I gave you this one last time as one of ours. And we'll look at this in just a moment. But here's how it works when you get your vision statement down. And it's clear, and it's challenging. And it's a mental picture. And it's something that is there to arouse the passions of people and to draw on the passions of people. Here's how it works. You get your vision at the top and talk about values. And you've got certain areas of the church that your vision calls you to focus on. 

Now, here are some examples of really good vision statements, at least in the literature that I've seen. River Oak Grace Church, River Oak, California. Their vision statement is "20 by 2000." Of course this was made some years ago. Actually I believe it was 1995 that by 2000 Okay " it is our prayer and vision that by the year 2000 River Oak Grace will experience 20 People will accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior regularly here at River Oak Church." I forget what they say was regularly but okay. Okay, that yeah, I want people to accept Jesus Christ. 20 missionaries serving as part of the River Oak Grace International Ministry staff team. Yeah, I'm about reaching out into the world. 20 of them? Sure. Five years? We can do that. 20 new churches planted to the River Oak Grace Ministries. 20? Wow that's a stretch, but I think we can do it. Let's, let's go our 20 unreached people groups significantly impacted with the truth of the gospel. In other words, we're going to be sending missionaries out to 20, at least 20 unreached people groups, and those who are missionary minded would say, yes, that's something I can grab onto. It's clear. It's compelling. It's something that's exciting to think about. It's something that, you know, those who are passionate about the outreach of the church, and that's a deep value of theirs will go and then you will go after this vision. And when you look at this, you start seeing focus areas right. This will impact the preaching that happens in this church. It will impact the children's ministry, it will impact the youth ministries, etc. etc, etc. 

Cherry Hills Community Church in Highlands Ranch Colorado church I got to visit a few years ago when I had a sabbatical and was looking at larger churches in the western United States and just trying to figure out how their their system of government related to the church because I was in a church that time that needed to grow and it just wasn't quite doing it. So so their vision "to see the members of Cherry Hill be so passionate about God's heart for the lost that they have become proficient in ministry skills, and are proactively involved in strategic outreach ministries locally, nationally, and globally." Wow, okay, so we want people of Cherry Hills to be passionate right? Now, hopefully some of them are already and that will begin to feed on itself. And there'll become a growing sense of passion about lost people, but they have to be so passionate about it, that they become proficient in ministry skills, are proactively involved in strategic outreach ministries locally, nationally, globally. This is considered to be one of vision statements is Yep. Okay. I'm passionate about loss people, where do I go? How do I sign up? I want to be part of this. 

Later, we're going to talk to a young woman who's a director of community ministry in Southern Michigan, Western Michigan, where I live here. And this is a big part of what they do is they take a statement similar to this, and I'll try to share there have her share their vision statement with us at the time we do that interview. But our idea is that this is something people will get behind. My wife and I are going to be volunteering in that community organization just because there's something about they have a group of ministry called Sacred Sons, but they realize that homeless people have nowhere to wash their clothes. So they provide, they bought a small house there, they refurbished it in the washing machine. So homeless people can come in, take a shower, have their clothes washed. And then they also provide mail for the people there because homeless people don't have a place to receive their mail. So they get checks from the government or whatever. This is the place of home. And, and it's a group that say, "yeah, we want to make a difference in this community." Their vision statement is "we want to bring shalom, God's overall all encompassing peace, to the city, a city that's been wracked by racial violence over the years and racial disruption over the years." And so how can we do that? Well, this is one way they do it. And so people like me are saying, I want to be part of that. I want to see the city, being renewed in the name of Jesus Christ, that people are finding the shalom of God there. 

So now, if I had to redo our vision statement to grow larger, grow deeper, to grow younger. I would use words like this, "we envision 100 new believers coming into our ministry over the next three years, as well as others who will join us in our mission." We're going to grow larger now, before looking at focus areas. Now, we just said something about our facility, and maybe our worship times that we're going to have to create another worship service. And we just said something about our children's ministry, if we create that many, what are we going to do with whatever how many more percentage of children is involved that ministry. It involves the missions ministries. How are we going to reach those 100? How are we going to engage them? Who's going to be doing that? How are they going to be trained, etc, etc? "To grow deeper, we envision people walking together." That's our mission statement writes "in large groups and small with a desire to become Christ centered." So we want people to be moving along that spiritual growth framework that we talked about a while back. And so we want to go deeper. And if you're going to be part of our church, it's because you have a desire to come closer to Christ, because you realize he makes all the difference in the world. I have used those kinds of wordings out to grow younger, reaching a new generation. 

I'd say something about the fact that there are the next generation, the millennial generation is leaving the church in droves. As I've shared before, something like 17 to 28% are in church. Other than that, the rest of them are not, I'd say something about wow, what an opportunity we have today to make that mission field what do we have to do to do that? And the reality is, it means we’ve got to change the way we're doing things. And so there's going to be some part of the church or some ministry that's got to be developed in order to do that well. And so I would say something about the fact that we will expend whatever is needed to present Jesus Christ to the next generation, and to everybody in our community. I don't know how exactly how I'd word it, but would say something maybe about local Bible clubs or something about whatever. But this is the kind of thing that's going to give us the light to go forward. And if the vision is caught, then people will jump on board resources come to two different things. I've said it before, they come to need where there's a deep need, or they come to vision. So if you're writing your vision statement, use words like we envision. It's a great picture word. This is what we envision. We envision a group of young adults growing in their faith. We envision a group of children being baptized, professing their faith, we envision a group of that word envision just creates a picture language for people or we believe God is calling us to. You've got a lot of people on that one side of that bell curve. They are the late majority and the laggards. And some of them are the critics, they're going to be less likely to say this is where we're going. And so you say to them, Well, do we believe this is what God is calling us to? The problem with that language, is that they can say, well, you believe that I believe God's calling us to something else. But for a vision statement, it works at time, you know, that word that Rick Warren use, we dream of. We dream of. We dream of you know 20,000 people joining our church family, we dream of. Now, that's a tough word too that's a interesting word. Because you say well it's a dream. Dreams all the time, right. And sometimes I eat too much pizza, but to dream of what could happen. If every kid in our area received a good early childhood education. We studied our culture. In the community in which I live, we found that that was a big problem. A huge percentage of the kids weren't getting early childhood education. And that has been proven in study after study after study to be crucial to their future education, and whether they would go on to college and careers after that. And so when we ask the person, that organization is called the United Way, what should we do as a church? What should we do? And his response was start a preschool and make it low cost or free. And so we began exploring that as a vision statement, because there was a stated need there. And so we envision 200 children coming to our preschool and us having an influence on those families, in the name of Jesus, to bring them wholeness, peace, etc, etc, etc. So ours, we envision every kid in our neighborhood and our community invited into relationship with Jesus Christ, that's a vision statement by a group that would go around a big bus and invite kids to come area after school to a Bible club on the bus right at their school. And they would spend time with them because that's their vision. They want to reach every kids or every school, they show up. Every week, every week group of volunteers, almost all volunteers, because this is their vision. We want the kids to hear about Jesus Christ. 

So writing your vision down can be an exciting process, encourage you to do it, and don't get caught in the weeds too much. But you're looking at something that's inspiring. There's a lot of stuff online if you want to go to find resources, you can put in your vision statements of churches and you'll get a lot of good ideas about those things are all of a sudden start plucking your heartstrings. That's a good sign of a good vision statement. So next time we're going to talk a little bit more about this as we move on to how that vision begins to impact the strategic planning


Going Public

So we've been talking kind of exhausting detail about how in the world you craft a vision and what difference that vision makes. And so we talked about creating a vision statement, that is a pithy statement a sentence or two, and is simply something that that grabs people's emotions, and hopefully, becomes kind of the, that North Star that we talked about that vision statement that people can come back to, will be able to say, that's what we're doing. That's where we're going. And so it's a directional thing, as I've introduced this new kind of symbol here in this slide of the guy on the arrow saying, that's where we're going. So we've talked about that a great deal. 

But now, it's time for you to go public. In other words, if you've done your job well, in crafting a vision and a vision statement, you've gotten people together, but you've not given into groupthink. You've got people on board with the vision, and now you're ready to go public with it to share it with the organization. Here's where you've got to be very, very, very careful. And that's what we're going to talk about, the vision is the star that you steer by. Remember, it's not the map that you follow, it’s not a detailed plan of how you're going to go from here to here. It's the picture of there. And so it becomes a star that you steer by much like the North Star, as I've been talking about, where it becomes the thing you judge your your progress, according to where you are in relationship to that fixed point, the North Star. And so the vision statement, and the vision itself becomes that North Star now, you get that down, you get the statement down to the point where you like it, you feel like it captures people's attention and love, then you're ready to do the rollout. 

It's vitally important how you do that rollout. As one person said, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression." And in fact, if you do this wrong, you're going to find that the people who are opposed to a vision are going to have time to marshal their resources if you have to go back and redo things. And so how you communicate is very important when you're going to roll out a vision statement. And so here's just some thoughts on rollout. It's all about communication. You define here, and you define there. Now, here, there's a problem. And you've got to define what that problem is in your communication. And then you've got to say, Why is there better than here. And then you've got to be able to say why something needs to be done, and why it needs to be done now. 

Now that sounds simple. But it requires good communication, because people have to acknowledge that there is a problem. One of my heroes, a person I've admired in the business world for his leadership was named Lee Iacocca. Now in the history of the United States, he was somebody who was involved in the manufacture of automobiles. He had been fired by Ford company and Chrysler decided to hire him as their chairman, their CEO. He was going to be the head of Chrysler. Now at the time, Chrysler was in deep trouble in this country. Sales had been going down, they were ready to start shutting down factories or laying off workers. Things look like a dire future for Chrysler Corporation. And Iacocca came in and tried to define, well, what's wrong here? What is the problem, and there were a myriad of problems. I know, I bought a car just before he took over there, I bought a Dodge Aries, I bought it brand new, I was looking at several different models from General Motors and Ford. But the Chrysler one I suspect was the cheapest. That's why I bought that one. It was the first one of the first front drive models on the market here in the United States. And so I bought this thing wasn't long after buying it that I noticed some things. You know, like, the driver's side door, for instance, had a small gap at the bottom when you close it. And it was just a fit and finish thing is what they call it was wasn't anything all that important. It wasn't a detriment to the operation of the of the car, but it was something that just made you realize that somebody didn't do their job here. And when you got inside and you looked up at the dome light, there was a gap there. Apparently they cut the hole where the dome light was to go into the headliner too big. And so there was this little gap where that should have been covered by the dome light. It's those kind of things that just as Iacocca went through, he says, you know, we've given up on quality, in order to produce quickly we given up on quality. And not only that have had they lessened their quality, but they were having more and more troubles with the cars that they were putting out there and people were coming back and were upset. Now, if you're in any kind of marketing situation, that's a bad thing. Studies have shown that people have a bad experience with a church or a car or a shopping experience, grocery store or whatever, they're going to tell 11 people, but if they have a good experience, they're only going to tell four. And so if you, if you've got a growing number of people who have a negative experience, they're going to be telling their friends don't buy a Chrysler, Well I owned a Chrysler and this was my experience. And so other organizations have had that same kind of experience, General Motors went through a very similar thing here, as there were just crazy things that were going on this problem, all these kinds of things, Lee Iacocca identified. And then he identified the fact that we've got to look for a new vision, a new future, something that's going to a value system that's going to push us into the future positively. And so he began to talk about quality. In fact, he ended up getting Toyota which was number one and quality at that point. He went out and he bought Toyota's and then he brought them into where his engineers were they took the cars apart, and they said, Look at this, everything fits. Everything's where it is. This is a this is what we're aiming for. It was a marvelous picture of what they were trying to create. And so they began to talk about the quality that they were going to develop into their operating and production system. And this was essential as he created a vision of a very profitable company, one where there's a growing market share, etc, it was necessary to create that new vision. Because in order to survive, he had to go to the United States Congress and ask for loans, large loans in order to keep the company afloat until they could turn things around. And it was the vision that he had and the way that he sold it and the way that he communicated it, that allowed the government give him millions of dollars. And in fact, they ended up paying them back sooner than what he anticipated and what the government anticipated, because they were captured by the vision. And pretty soon the country was captured by the vision. And people began to buy Chrysler products once again. And they began producing some new products that were exciting. And yeah, so that's, that's an example from the world of marketing and the world of manufacturing. 

The same thing is true in the church, or in the Christian organization, or in the organization for which you are a part of the village or part of the city you're a part of. In order to move people for the future. They have to understand that there's a problem here. There's a problem right here right now. And you've got to propose a solution for that future that leads them to the future. Now I think we've been using Nehemiah as an example of this all along. And it's a good example. Nehemiah, you remember, was first touched in chapter one, as he says, My brother Hanani came back from Jerusalem area. And he said, How are the people doing there? And Hanani says it's terrible, the walls broken down, and that that's an issue, a huge issue in that day and age. First of all, the wall was something that provides security for the city, as we've talked about. But beyond that, it was also a disgrace. Not only could people get into those walls break in there and rob anybody they wanted to rob if they were powerful enough. But it was a symbol of disgrace. You see, battles back in that time weren't considered to be just a battle between the Assyrians and the Israelites. It was considered to be a battle between their gods. You see gods were considered to be a kind of geographically limited. And so there was a god. That was the god of that area, in fact, you read later, when the conquerors decided to resettle some people in the area of the central part of what was Palestine, God sent lions among them, you read about this in the book of II Kings. And so they appealed to the Emperor, they said, you know, we don't know how to appease the god of this area. And so some priests were sent to instruct them. That was the idea. So if this army conquered this one, it was because this god was stronger. And so if you've got the City of God, the city of David, Jerusalem, the center of Temple worship, the center of where God said he would live, you would have his experience there, and that place is torn apart and the wall is torn down. The only conclusion is, this god must be incredibly weak. And so Hanani tells Nehemiah about the desperation of that city where the walls are broken down. And he ends up weeping and fasting and praying for days until God begins to give him an inkling of his calling to be a leader in that situation. And he goes to the emperor, the king, and he is given permission to go back there to try to make a difference there. And he's given resources to do that with. And so he goes, and and you can read about him making an inspection of the walls. 

First of all, he's trying to determine what's the reality, as we talked about together to find out what is here, you know, what, what is the presence? And what's the problem? And so he goes around the entire city inspecting the walls. It's only then that he announces the vision, he rolls it out. And he does this in a passage we've looked at before. And Nehemiah chapter two, "then I said to them, you see the trouble we are in." He's talking about, here we are, "Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates had been burned with fire." That's here, there, "Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem will no longer be in disgrace. And then I told him about the gracious hand of my God upon me and what the king had said to me." 

God had arranged every step of the way, had arranged for things to happen, so that they wouldn't even have to pay for the equipment, they wouldn't even have to pay for the materials to rebuild the wall: the king and the Empire were going to do all of that, that God was behind all of this all the way. So all of that's communicated to the people and they reply, great. Let's get started. Yeah, that's his rollout. 

So when you're thinking of rolling out your vision statement, the first thing you've got to include is defining reality. Max Depree is a well known as a Christian businessman. For many years, he was the head of a large office manufacturing company here in West Michigan, where I'm live. And he wrote several books on leadership. In one of them he said, "The first task of leadership is to define reality." Because sometimes people can't quite see what reality is. In fact. Tom Rainer. I've quoted him before. He's a leader, a consultant, church consultant in this area. And he says his hardest task, when it comes to a church is to get them to acknowledge reality, acknowledge what the problem is, the here before you go to there, and he tells a story of one church where he went there, and he looked at attendance banners, he looked at the membership records, he looked at the giving patterns over the past decade. He looked at the number of people coming to faith, the number of children involved in the children's ministry, he looked at everything he could look at. And at the end, he was asked to present to the congregation and they gathered and he said, Look, you are in trouble, folks. You are troubled, you're going to die as a congregation if things don't change, And he hauled out his graphs and he said, you know, to his great, not surprised because he'd had it happen before. But to his great chagrin, somebody then and stood up and said, "Well, you know, it's not really that bad. There's just, you know, a few pews emptier than what there used to be. But it's not that bad." 

And so it took a while to convince that church that they were in dire need, because it had happened so slowly. And it had happened over 20 years that they hadn't even noticed that they had so shrunk. I shared this picture. This is the kind of place we're talking about. Once upon a time, those pews were probably full with young families and children bustling, but you look at it now. And it's changed dramatically. To the point there's only a few people, it's only about 50% full. In the United States, it's considered that 80% of the churches are on a plateau or declining 80% of the churches are on their way to death. Now, how do you define reality? It's your job as a leader. When you're communicating, you're rolling out your vision for a new future to say, here's where we are. Here is where the problem is. Andy Stanley put it this way, as far as how you communicate your vision. He said, "explanation of the problem, engages the mind. The solution engages the imagination, the region, the reasons engage the heart. What difference will this make? Why should we attempt this? God is in it how?" 

Now, I want to apply that with three stories. The first one is of a church in my community. I took some training to become a consultant with a group in Chicago, Illinois, and they had contract with a church very near me to do strategic planning. And their goal was they said that out of all the 350,000 some churches in the United States, they were trying to identify 10,000 that were really going to make a difference in the next 10 years. And they were consulting with them, trying to make them more effective, trying to provide them tools and influence. And I happen to go to lunch with one of the trainers actually been around for a while. And he said, How are things going over at such and such a church? And he said, it's terrible. So we thought they were one of the 10,000. But they're not says because they refused to acknowledge reality. When the problem was explained, there were so many people who said, No, and we're going to get into that later, what will kill vision. So many people had said, No, that the place was moving ahead, and they were canceling the contract with them. So you define reality. And then you talk about the preferable future? What difference is this going to make? Why should we do this? And why should we do this now? And the why is usually one of two things, as we've talked about, it's usually a problem that needs to be identified. Now, sometimes that problem can be something that is going to lead to your death, eventually. When I moved to the church in California, we defined this whole process of relocation. And that was going to be our preferred vision. Now, we had several vision statements before that, that wasn't part of it, we were going to just simply expand our facility. But over a period of time, we came to the conclusion that this was God's will for us among the leadership. And so we rolled that out. And ended up being a long process took us six and a half years to relocate from where we were to a new campus that would allow future growth of the congregation. And along the way, we ended up having to move into temporary facilities, we ended up planning to be there for 18 months, ended up being two and a half years. While we were in this temporary facility, you know, we kept holding up that vision of where we're going to go except I kept I kept blowing it, I kept trying to empathize with those people are saying how hard this is and how painful it is. And sometimes I just talked to negatively about the process, because I was trying to acknowledge their pain. But we tried overall to hold up that that vision of where we're going and how we're going to get there. And it was a time of real testing. Well, our attendance while we were there began to decline, overall, it declined 23%. Imagine we're collecting millions of dollars trying to raise millions of dollars to do this relocation. And our attendance is going down by 23%, resources down 23%. And things got so bad that we were at a point where we're gonna have start laying off staff because we couldn't afford to keep everybody anymore. And we developed, we decided to have a congregational meeting and invited the entire congregation if we talked about the vision. And once again, we had time to talk about the vision of where we're going and why we're doing this. But then we started talking about the problem. That's where we're going. But now we've got this problem. And that is our income is not matching our vision. And so we asked the congregation, what do you think we ought to do? And that was a strategic move. As it turned out, we didn't know exactly what God was going to do. But we've been praying about this for a long time. So what should we do? And in the process of that discussion among people in the congregation, an elderly member of our church stood up. And he said, you know, he said, I've been part of this community for a long time. And he said, You know, I've seen all kinds of projects that resulted from visions that we had. And there were there was a Christian school in that area that was kindergarten to 12th grade and had an excellent education. It had an excellent record. And it was his generation that built that thing. There was a school for the elderly, there was a place for the elderly, excuse me, a rest home that included places where people could live independently, as well as where they could live with just some help, and where they could get skilled nursing care. And it was a magnificent facility. And it was known in the community for the quality of care that's gotten there. People wanted to get into that home. And there was a school and home for those who had developed developmental disabilities. And in fact, there were homes throughout the community where these young adults were living and sometimes older adults were living and they were being taught to live independently. And he said, you know, all of those situations, we hit a time like this where where we wondered, is that vision true? And we found that we had to buckle up again, and start sacrificing and and then the problems will go away and we can reach that vision. I'm not using his exact words, obviously, but it was a powerful moment. In fact, what made it really powerful was something that can only come from God. A young father was sitting there that night, had three young children, and he stood up and he went and stood next to this old older man, as the man had now sat down, put his hand on his shoulder, and he looked at him he said I have failed you. Said you folks sacrificed in order to provide all this stuff we enjoy, said your sacrifice to build this church originally. He said I never had a part of that I just received it. You sacrifice to make that Christian school a reality. I didn't sacrifice I just pay the tuition, my children go there. I have not taken on the burden myself. He said, and I vow to you today that I'm going change that. 

You can't script moments like that. It was incredibly powerful. And things turned around, and we ended up attaining our vision. So yeah, so the explanation of the problem will engage the mind. Yeah, this is the problem. But the solution engages the imagination and gets people excited. And the solution is, we're going there. Now, why should we attempt this? And God is in it, how? In the process of preparing for relocation, we had to redo our vision, our vision up to that point, had we hadn't put a number on the vision statement, but we said, yeah, what's it gonna look like when we are a church and 1000 people? When I came there, there was about 400, attending regularly. And we said, we're aiming toward 1000. And that has implications for building programs, implications for staffing, implication for financial outlay implications for missions, outreach, all of those things. We”re going there. And we got there. It was amazing. God blessed incredibly. And every year, I took a group of leaders, the elders, the deacons, and the staff on a retreat to talk about the vision. And where are we going in this next year? What has God done this past year? Let's celebrate it. And we were in one of those meetings. On a weekend, that we had reached our vision. And so we celebrated that together, we prayed, we praised God, we worshipped together, just thanking God for that reality. And then there were gatherings in small groups of leaders to talk about areas of ministry within our church. And in each one, I had them defining the reality. Where are we now talk about that talk about where God has led us in this past year and years. And then I want you to talk about what that ministry areas going to look like, when we're to 2000 people in attendance. 

And so they got together, they discussed and then I called them back for reporting and the first group came back and reported and said, you know, what, we don't want to go to 2000. We're pretty comfortable where we are, you know, we know enough people were big enough, we've got an influence and etc. Second group piped up and said, you know, we came to the same conclusion. So somehow was Well, wait a minute you know, we've talked about getting here. But now we're talking about going there, and they're not on board. They're the leaders, what are we going to do? And I spent just a few moments quietly praying. Finally, I said, probably led by the Holy Spirit and said you know, what your wants to do, or what I want to do, really is secondary to what does God want to do? Here we are in Southern California, one of the least churched wide open mission fields that exists on the face of the earth. And we're in a key area, what is it that God wants to do. And so we scrapped my agenda for the rest of that retreat. And we spent time in prayer together, we spent time talking together, we spent time worshiping together. And at the end, we all left there, it gave us it's one of those pictures in my mind that won't go away, of this group of people gathered men and women arms around each other and saying we're going to 2000. And that's how we ended up getting into relocation discussion in the first place. What does that mean? The next year meant that our budget went up 25%. And we had a whole finance committee quit. But the leaders were saying, Nope, we're going to 2000. And we began to engage the reason that God wants us to go there. And the church came along and voted for relocation, etc. So here you go, you explain the problem. That's here, we're going there. This is why the solution, and here are the reasons, this is the difference it’s going to make for our children or our young people, we should attempt this because it's going to bring glory to God. So God is in it. And this is how he's in it now. 

Now, when you communicate, roll out your vision, you don't just tell everybody at the same time you roll it out. When we were talking about relocation we engaged a professional fundraiser Christian for a fundraiser from Resource Services Incorporated, based in Dallas, Texas. We talked about how do we do this? So how do we get more people buying in financially to sacrifice for this vision to become a reality? And what he said was clear so you don't tell everybody at one time. You don't try to get them all to sign on the dotted line at one time. Said what you do is you get the leaders involved, the elders, the deacons, those people that influence within the congregation, and you have them make the commitments first to financial giving. And then when you go public with it, you say we've already got out of the out of the $3 million. We need whatever number you have, we've already got 1.2 million committed from the leaders of this church. And so you parcel out the vision stuff, you roll it out in a way that says, here's where we're going. And you get leaders on board. In my church in California, there were a couple of people, they were church fathers, they've been there since the beginning. And they just had their pulse on the church, in many ways, and I knew that if they were against something, it wouldn't fly. And so when we were going to change something, I would always take you know Hubert was the one guy's name, and say, can come out for lunch with me, and I would share with him what we were talking about. And would try to get him on board to see if he was on board, because I knew he had influence with a bunch of different people. And so you communicate to the leaders first. 

And then you go out to the rest of the people. Now, I want to close this session simply by saying, vision is powerful. We're going to talk later on about the fact that people can kill vision easily. But vision is powerful for forming a life. I began to experience the first sense of a call to ministry not when I was in high school, but when I was in the sixth grade. I grew up in a family, I had no models of people. My father wasn't a pastor, he worked in a factory. I had no professionals, my older brothers, of which there are many professionals who are committed themselves to Christian ministry for their life, no examples like that, that were coming forward. And yet, I was in sixth grade, and my name is Ballast. And so in my class, I was first in the alphabet in sixth grade. And my teacher was a woman, Mrs. Friends is now with the Lord. And she announced on the first day after talking all morning about how hard it was going to be in sixth grade, she talked about the fact that, you know, if we were going to survive sixth grade, we would have to be doing one hour of homework every single night. And that took the whole morning and at lunch time, it was my responsibility as first in the alphabet in this Christian School to give devotions. And so I did. And I think what a snotty little kid I quoted from Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 12, some books, Solomon wrote, wise man, and he said, "of making of books, there is no end and much study is a weariness to the flesh." So I read that verse, And I prayed, and I thought, Oh, I'm in trouble now. And sure enough, you know, as we began eating our bag lunches, here comes Mrs. Friends down the aisle of desks, I was seated about three quarters of the way back in the room. And I thought, I'm going to get it now. And she leaned down, I thought, what a woman a vision. She said, Have you ever thought of going into the ministry? And I hadn't, I hadn't even thought about it. But that idea planted in me bore fruit later. And I've had 39 wonderful years of ministry, and I look back at that moment to say, that's when God began to plant a vision in me of what could happen in my life. 

Visions are powerful. They're powerful for your organization, where you are now may be a place of trouble. It may not, it may be just that there are new opportunities to arise, as we were going from 1000 to 2000. But the power of a vision to pull an organization forward is great. And so learn well how to craft your vision statement, how to create the vision in the first place, practice it, and then roll it out with confidence and with joy, being able to announce it in such a way that the people say in response, well, let's start building and you'll see God do marvelous things.


Vision Killers

This is session 21 of our study on leadership this morning. And just as a reminder, we are in that section of leadership called the vision where the leader interacts with the culture to create a vision of a preferable future. And as we've been saying, with this sample of the star by Glenn Heemstra, the preferred future vision becomes the star you steer by, not a simple map to be followed. In other words, maps, if there are a variety of ways to get to your destination, the destination is what the vision is, the map will come later, as we talk about strategic planning. But we looked at now you know, how you do things like develop a vision, how you experience God leading you into the next step or phase of your ministry or the ministry. business that you are part of whether it's church or nonprofit, or whatever. 

So you looked at that we talked about communicating that vision? How do you do that rollout in a successful way? Well, today before we begin to move on to that idea of change, and and specifically writing the strategic plan, I just want to spend a few moments noticing on what is the title on this subject for the day, and that is vision killers. You'll find out that as soon as you roll out a vision for a preferred future, there are going to be some forces that come against that vision that are designed to kill it. 

The first one of these, obviously, is tradition. Tradition is been known for decades to be something that will stop churches from changing. In fact, there was a book that came out years and years ago by Ralph Neighbour, called The Seven Last Words of the Church, you know: we never tried it that way before. Traditions are powerful. Just in normal life, we tend to pattern our lives, right. I mean, just think of how you get ready in the morning. If you have a certain pattern that you follow, because it's comfortable. It's something that you've gotten used to, and you don't have to think about it anymore. So if you're in the shower, you shower yourself in a particular order, you clean yourself up, you shave at a particular order, particular time, you go to your closet, you choose clothes in a particular way, particular time, and you're ritualized all of those things, because it's just easier, and it's comfortable. And you don't have to make decisions, a great deal. In fact some people like Steve Jobs of Apple computer used to wear only one thing, he wore jeans and a black turtleneck. And he said, because that way, I don't have to make any decisions. When I go to my closet, these kinds of things are powerful in forming our lives. And if if we do that enough times, there are things that are repeated enough times, they become traditions, they become entrenched. And when you start getting a vision that's going to require some kind of change of people in the future, they're automatically going to say, that'll never work. We've never done it that way before. That's the statement. 

Now, many of you have faced this already, at some time or another, you faced it because there has been somebody in your ministry who didn't like the way you've done it. Or if you're new on the scene, if you're a new pastor, you know, and the other pastor was there a long time, you know, say, your pastor, so and so didn't do it that way. You know, I heard that a little bit when I went to my very first church, The pastor that had preceded me was deeply loved and appreciated in that congregation. And I came with a whole different set of gifts and set of interests and, and a new vision for the church and how kept out here. But but that's not the way that was done before. It's one of those things that is designed to kill mission. 

Now the people of God are good people, you know, they wouldn't say, Yeah, we're trying to kill the vision. They're just trying to be honest about their own reaction. They're not trying to, or they're not out to, get you usually, but they are people who are focused somewhere. In fact, tradition always focuses backward. And vision always focuses forward. And so tradition, people are looking back and they are celebrating all the things that were done in that ministry. And you're going to change that. And we're going to talk about that next time when we talk about the price to pay for living out a vision that people will identify you with a vision regardless of how many people were connected with it. They're going to identify you with a mission. We liked what was and you're going to change it and we haven't done it that way before; it won't work. 

Think of a man in my church in California. After I came there, we instituted a bunch of changes. We were looking at a variety of changes for the future. And in fact, the community was changing in Southern California. There was a rapid change in population. And so where we were had a lot of changes in demographics and a great deal of time. And so it wasn't just us that was changing as a church, or seeing the change to become something different. It was the Christian school that the church was closely associated with, they began to realize that the birth rates were going down in our community of four or five churches that were supporting churches to the Christian School. And so when they looked ahead 12 years, and I had the privilege of chairing their vision or planning team, we looked at 12 years and realized that if we just depended on the supporting churches to provide students for that school, it was going to be a shadow of itself. Because there were only going to be like, 20 kindergarteners, and right now, the school is a healthy, like for 7 or 800 kids. And so if there's only that many kindergarteners, what's the future hold, beyond that is going to go down further, and it's going to go down further, and it's going to go down further. It's that kind of thing that they were looking at and saying, you know, we're gonna have to change to survive. So they were talking about change. 

Well, a man who was in our church who was a very wealthy man, you know, God had given him a lot of material gifts. He was somebody who was very generous with his giving. I mean, he, he really was faithful to not just our community in giving, especially in the support of missions, but faithful to the school, he was faithful to a variety of organizations beyond that, our radio ministry, he was faithful to ministries within the denomination, he was a generous man. But the changes just got to be too much for him at one point. And he began to talk in this way of tradition about remembering when. And I think one of the breaking points was when the school you know projected another whole group of children that they might get, but it would be different, because these children weren't from the same Christian background that we were. And this man was afraid of what that was going to do to the system. 

So I heard of this conversation secondhand with the superintendent of school visited him. I visited him, we talked with him at various times, because we valued him as a person. And certainly, we valued his ongoing support of what was going on in ministry. Well, the superintendent visited him and finally started talking about the fact that these changes, were saying that the present is not good. All the changes in the community are not good. And so they began to talk about when was it good, you know, when was it good. And they concluded superintendent related to me that it was good back in the middle 1950s. That was when it was safe. That was when it was good. That's when families divorce rate wasn't so prevalent in our community, there wasn't all this problem with racial relations and racial interrelations. There weren't all these difficulties of overcrowding on the freeway, it was good in the middle 1950s. And so as we were proposing, as a church, a major building program, as the church was possibly partook of proposing a relocation and a building program, it just got to be too much because he couldn't say, vision. Vision, is harmed by those who are focusing on tradition. 

And so you, as a leader are going to have to address this vision killer, especially if your organization has been around for a period of time, you can bet there are going to be people who will speak this way. Maybe not exactly, but they will speak this way. So how do you deal with this vision killer? You honor the past. You show how the new vision is a continuation of the old vision, you identify heroes from the past, and especially charter members. One of the things I learned from a fundraiser when we were going through a relocation that was going to cost a great deal of money. We were talking about how are we going to frame this for the congregation. And so we're talking about, you know, promotional videos that we would produce and and what would there would be in each one. And we found real value in identifying some of the charter members. Some of the people who had had the vision of starting that church, the church started as a vision of a group of people, a small group of people, there was no Pastor when it started. It was just this group of small people, but they had this vision of a different kind of church in their community where people could be welcomed, where there was a more evangelistic emphasis where people could come in and get to know Jesus, where the ministry would stretch out into the community. And so one after another, we lined some of those charter members up for video. And we had them sitting in various places and just talking about how they were in favor of this vision. Said yes, it's going to mean big changes. It's going to be driving to a different area. It's going to mean different seating patterns. It's going to mean all of that stuff. But it's going to mean that we can reach more people for Jesus Christ. They talked about heroes and some of the sacrifices that were paid, about the person that had the vision for the first building in the church and how he'd bought that land before the church could afford to buy it so that he can reserve it for the property they talked about how the new place what was projected was going to be fantastic. Because we had purchased 21 acres, on a corner and a main what was going to be a major intersection in a newly developed area of southern California, they talked about all that. And it was a marvelous thing, because those that were saying tradition is bad, couldn't say it. Cause here are people who were part of it, who were honored leaders in the process, and yet they were saying, here we go, we've got to go, we're part of this. So if you deal with this, you honor the past, you acknowledge that these people had something good going, and you're just trying to continue the great vision that they had. So tradition can be a powerful vision killer. 

The second one is fear. Fear means breaking out of a comfort zone. Fear means risk. And with the idea of risk, comes the idea of failure. Now, this idea can be very terrifying for people the idea of failure. Now the fear of failure is something that had me personally, I have to say, when we changed, as I shared earlier, you know, we had this vision of creating a larger church, and we were trying to build that church on 4.36 acres. And we had money that we had committed and that we had raised and it was going to cover a large part portion of the cost. And then we began to change that vision and it grew. And we looked at relocation, and now we were looking at not like at a few million dollars, but we were looking at 10s of millions of dollars in order to accomplish this new vision in this new community. And I’ve got to tell you, I was scared of failure. As I've shared earlier in the in the introductory class, you know, part of what my baggage is carrying is idea that I'm this dumb little kid. And so failure would reinforce that. And so I was scared of failure. And so as we began to revision, our ministry and revision relocation, I remember talking with somebody and just saying, I don't know how to deal with this. And I had one person help me a great deal. How do you handle this? When fear hits you as a person? Well you answer fear with faith, with a question, is it God's will? Is it God's vision, not my vision? The person that helped me a great deal with that was a man on a retreat with us. We were part of a regional envisioning group on a retreat for several days, trying to say what would God call all of our churches in our region of California to in our denomination, and we just got talking one night and it turned intimate. And we began sharing intimate things I shared with him some of my fear. As we were going into this, we hadn't started the building process yet, we were still in that vision selling thing. And I just shared how scared I was to go into this whole thing. And so he led me through a process he said, Okay, how did you make the decisions each step along the way? What were the major decisions? How would you go about it? You know, and so I was able to identify the prayer that went into each step of the way, I was able to identify the ideas that had come and how they had come, how we had brought into the congregation and how we had congregational endorsement for moving forward. And each step of the way, we talked about that. One of my big fears was man, that's a lot of money to ask of people. And so he walked away. At the end of the day, he said, you know, Bruce, I just got to say, what you've described, would tell me that your vision is God's will for your church at this time, said and to move forward, you may have to remember that if it's God's will, it's God's bill. In other words, God has the resources, he's the one who's going to have to pay for it. And in some senses, that was incredibly freeing for me didn't take away my fear entirely. But it took away some of it, & allowed me to move forward to not allow that to kill the vision. 

Now, that's fear on my part, you will also be dealing with fear of a variety of kinds on the part of your people. For some of them, it's fear of losing influence and power. During one time of change, I remember, a psychiatrist friend came to visit me in my office, and it was during a time where there's just a lot of criticism about what was going on and he said, you know, look at the people who are the major voices in all of this criticism. He said, they're in the age of power, in other words, said between about 40 to about 55-60 ish, an age of power, and when they get toward the upper end of that. He said they often tend to lose power. It begins to diminish in their lives. They're less influential, they don't have as many people who listen to them said, and so in many ways, they're trying to hang on to power, they're grabbing it and holding on. And he said, you know, you're gonna have to remember that, that their fear is of losing power. And so how can you invite them into the process that will allow them some influence, so you don't give them veto power, and you don't put them with too many people to voice their fears. Now, unwittingly, I found that I was somebody who was just nurturing that kind of fear, nurturing fear of failure on the way, on the way to the vision completion. 

What happened was, I listened to these people who are trying to kill the vision. And they wouldn't say that, again. They're good people. But they had all kinds of questions. They had reservations, they had fears. And when I was talking publicly, I would try to identify with them because I wanted to bring them along. And so I would acknowledge their fears. And I would say, I know we're afraid of this. And I know we're afraid of this. And I know we're afraid of this. And one time somebody came to me and said, Look, you've got to talk positively about this whole thing. You can't be talking negatively, because it's scaring us. I'll talk about that next time in the next session about how we're called to go all in when we have a vision for change. But here, I just want you to note that fear is a huge vision killer, and you've got to be aware of it. And you're going to have to address it. Because there will be people who will try to unwittingly or maybe even ploddingly, try to kill your vision. 

So, tradition and fear. Third one is stereotypes. Oftentimes, we make stereotypes. And that keeps us from fulfilling a vision. It may even keep us from having a vision. I think of a church in Arizona, and they were getting this new vision of being more relevant in their community. And they realized that they would probably have to do something about their music. But that was a scary thing for them. Because they had an older congregation, they had a very traditional music kind of worship setting. They had a pipe organ that somebody had donated years and years ago, and it was one of those holy cows. Those things that are precious in the heritage of the church, they had a choir that got up there in robes, it was a very traditional order of service. All of those things were just what they experienced the leadership week to week. And so when people started talking about change within the vision team, within the team that was creating a vision for the new future. It was concerning. Until they actually took a survey of their congregation, you see, their stereotype was we got older people, they like traditional worship, that's what they want. They did the survey, and they found that most of the people there wanted a greater variety of worship. And so all it took was asking them, and that could take away the stereotype that would allow the vision to move forward. 

Another church that I had a call to, at one point, had a stereotype about their community. As I was interacting with them, one of the questions I asked at some of the initial phases of seeing if I was going to go there as pastor, and if they were going to invite me there to become their pastor. One of the questions I asked was what's been happening in this community over the last 10 years. And you know they said, there hasn't been too much change in this community for a while. You know. It's pretty stable, good things a lot of people hear from there there, there's a certain level of profitability here, there's a certain level of prosperity here, some good, solid, pretty secure, neighborhood to be in. Then I did the demographics. I began to look at the demographics for that city, and found that there was a radical kind of change, ethic change going on in their community. And later on, I was with the chairman of their elder board, and I was riding down the main street of their town. And there are all these signs that lined Main Street. And as we looked, we found that there was very seldom one in English. And I said what happened here anyway, who are all these business owners? Yeah, he said, you know, there's all signs used to be in English  but now they're in Korean, and they're in Japanese, and they were in Indian and all kinds of different ethnic groups that were now part of that area. And so the next vision that they got as a result of shutting down their stereotypes of just a white world that they were part of, was it in, it just blew up their vision so that it grew greatly. 

Now this was not a Vision Killer for them, it was a vision grower. Now, they had a vision from growing their church, and they've had various strategies, but they hadn't yet caught on to the fact that wow, we are in a great mission field here. So, new community, yes, that can kill your vision, if you have a stereotype about it, and no one will come or if this kind of ministry won't work, find out. That's how you address this, you find out the truth, and you share it with your people. So we've looked at the tradition, fear, & stereotypes. 

Complacency is another great vision killer. Now 70% of plans fail. And one of the reasons primary reason they fail is complacency. And that is that people like it the way it is, and they don't want to change, there's a lack of inertia to actually institute change. In fact, one of the ways you've heard this in our tradition, if you're in my tradition, when people new have new plans, new ideas, you hear it in a certain sentence, that will try to kill vision, and just make it No, can't we just stay the way we are. And it's this phrase, if we just preach the Word, God will bless us. Now I took that quote from a church that was looking at a new youth emphasis. And a new youth ministry, and was talking about the fact that the church had experienced some decline in membership. And so they were looking at a variety of ways to be more impactful in their community. But now as they were looking at this, the people didn't want to make the changes necessary, because it was it was going to involve changing times of worship, it was going to involve the building being used for a variety of things and by a group that may not care for the building take care of the building in the same way. And they did all they will probably have repair costs and increased cleaning costs, and etc, etc. So the idea is, we don't need those plans. We don't need that vision. If we just preach the Word, God will bless us. How do you address this one? This is huge. This is just a huge, huge thing. I can't tell you how huge this is. You know, can't we just be happy the way we are? So what you need is some short term wins, you need to get permission to try things for a short period of time. You know, anytime we introduced a new worship service or a new worship time that would confuse the regular worship times we would say it let's try it for a three month period. And at the end of that three month period, to give her a report, to talk about how this was a win to see what God had done with it, etc, etc, etc. Look for short term wins. Things that say yeah, the changes that we institute, we get permission for this small change. But now, when we get success, we we get permission for the big thing, bigger changes that will help us fulfill the vision. So short term wins are important. Now, this means you've got to choose very carefully, what you're going to emphasize as your short term win, to make sure that it's going to be a short term win. Word enough complacency. We're going to talk more about that later, as we get into strategic planning and change theory. 

Here's another one: fatigue. Be sure you steward energy. Years ago, it was a rather shocking report that came out out of a group that specialized in helping churches plant churches, plant daughters. And what they found was the best way to accomplish planting a daughter church was sending out a planting team. So you don't send out just one person or two people. You send out a team of people 15-20 the best. And yet, then you have them working on it and you send the team hopefully 100 to get that church established well. Well the study that was done of all the churches that have been planted in that style, and found that the general wisdom was that after one year, members of the planting team were no longer members of that church, the new daughter church, they came back to the mother church. One of the greatest reasons was fatigue. There was so much that rested on them. Yes, it was exciting to get that first that new church going, there's nothing like it; if you talk to people, they will point back to those times as some of the most exciting in their lives. But it's hard, hard, hard work. And so people will get tired, you will get tired. How do you address fatigue? Well, it's very simple. You keep restating the vision for yourself. You keep restating the vision for other people. You talk to yourself, you talk to your other people, and you give people the permission to rest. When I started to become aware of this, we were going through change. I remember going to a couple in my church and just saying you know what, you're too involved. They were shocked. They were friends of mine but he was involved, I think he was on council at that time or elder Deacon gathering. So he's a significant elder; she, I had asked to be head of our prayer ministry. And so she had been involved in prayer ministry and as change goes on, there was more spiritual warfare, we're going to talk about that in the future as well. And so they were just getting tired. They were getting tired. And so I said, you know, what, you folks, I value you long term, you need a break. I've talked before about your need for a break just a few sessions ago. And that idea of despair. If you get to that point where we talked about Elijah, where God gave him food and gave him rest, and gave him a new vision of his mission and ministry, you've got to take times to take care of yourself, and steward your energy. Don't get down too far before you seek help. Enough said on that, that'll kill your vision. If people get tired, they'll get too tired. 

And then the last one that I want to focus on today is short term vision, short term thinking. It's easy to stop partway. And people will start saying can't we just be happy the way we are. This is one you'll hear. They'll they'll see the wins. And they will celebrate those but then will come a time when the vision requires a greater change. And this phrase will come up, can't we just be happy the way you are. You'll hear people say that. Can't we just be? We're tired of change. Basically. I had a good partner. And he was a partner of mine for 20 years on staff sharing ministry together sharing intimately with ministry. And we had come to a point where we had reached some of our goals, a good number of our goals. And so the challenge now was, where are we going to go from here? And he looked at me and he sighed and he said, can't we just be happy with where we are? And the answer is no. No. How do you answer this? Well, you answer it by looking at whether it is God's vision or ours. I trusted this man greatly as my partner. And so that made me say, Well, maybe we've done enough. Maybe it's time to look at something else. And so together, we began to pray and we began to study and we took some others in on that and asked Okay, this vision of relocation is that really ours or is it God's and if it's God's vision, then we go ahead because we have a master. We have a leader, we have a Savior, who's also the shepherd who's saying Here we go. And our job is to follow.

So these are vision killers, be aware of them, address them, and they you'll find your way going more smoothly. Don't be surprised when they show up. Or rather be ready for it. Have a strategy and it will make your mission your vision much more real and much more attainable.




Last modified: Thursday, May 29, 2025, 2:37 PM