Reading: 1.6—Vision in Motion

1.6 Vision in Motion: A healthy, credible vision is organic, meaning that it lives, it breathes, it develops, it matures, and is fluid and flexible enough to make course corrections. This is important for two reasons. First, despite our best efforts at rightly discerning God’s vision for our churches, more than likely we won’t nail every element of that vision on the head. We are trusting God to move us in the right direction, but not everything will turn out exactly as expected. At best, our view of God’s future for us will be incomplete. Second, as we move forward toward that desired future, we’ll encounter new elements that we didn’t anticipate. Perhaps we’ll discover an opportunity that we didn’t realize would be there. Perhaps a new person or family will come into our church with particular skills, interests, and experiences that are outside of what we planned, but with this new human resource, new possibilities open up. Regardless, a healthy vision, in order to sustain, must have the capacity to adapt or pivot. The rule of thumb, stated in the negative, is don’t be rigid and don’t ever fall in love with your methodology because it will undoubtedly need to change at some point.

I use two overarching questions to drive the vision discernment process. Key Vison Question 1: How does God want to express Himself through our church in our community at this time? This question, which can be framed as a prayer, looks forward into the future and discerns, or imagines, what God will do. There are four key elements to this question. First, it’s God’s vision that we seek and not our own. Vision is not about creativity, it’s about discernment. There’s plenty of room for creativity once God’s direction is determined, but the starting place is to pursue what’s on God’s heart and mind. Second, the focus is on our church. There is no need to look to other churches that seem to be doing well and try to mimic what’s happening there. Giving the benefit of the doubt, whatever is happening positively in such a church is God’s vision and plan for that church and community, and it’s doubtful that the success of that church in that community will transfer into success at our church in our community. God is a never-ending resource so, while we might be inspired by what God is doing in other churches, there’s no need for mimicry because God has plenty of vision to go around.

Third, the mission field that is in view is our community, not some other community. Again, each community has its unique character and characteristics, so one size doesn’t fit all. We must get to know our community inside and out if we’re going to be effective at reaching the harvest that resides there. Finally, we have to minister like it’s right now and not some previous time in the history of the church. Again, stated from the negative, you can’t minister effectively in the 21st century with outdated 20th century programming, perspectives, and methodology. Time only moves in one direction and a church can’t go back. One of my principles is that the church lifecycle is a one-way street. It only moves forward; never backward. To be clear, the content of our faith, meaning our doctrine, our theology, the truth of God’s Word, is never-changing, but our approaches to ministry, our methodology, must be continuously adapting to new community conditions.

That brings me to Key Vision Question #2: What did God mean by that? As a church is moving toward its rightly discerned, godly vision, there will be those moments of encounter when something or someone enters the scene unexpectedly. My church in Phoenix was searching for a new location of approximately four acres of land, picturing ourselves as a church that would max out the potential that four acres would allow. God delivered nine and a half acres of developable land. Question: What does God mean by that? Apparently, God’s vision for us had a larger shoe size than what we had discerned originally. In another instance, we sensed God’s calling us to be a church that planted other churches, so, we went into northern Mexico through Nogales with a vision of starting a network of Mexican church plants. On the second day of our first reconnaissance trip into Mexico, we met leaders from a church plant in Mexico that were part of a network of Mexican church plants. Question: What did God mean by that? We realized that God had NOT sent us to Mexico to START a network but to FIND this network. We shifted our vision, put our resources behind that network, and saw it expand from eight churches to eighteen over the next three years.

Rightly discerning and developing a godly vision requires us to acknowledge that vision is organic, that it is in motion. Key Vision Question 1 gets us started on the right path, while Key Vision Question 2 allows us to adjust along the way. In so doing, the lost in the community are reached and God is glorified.

A Discerning & Developing Vision Compilation:

1. The Glory of God: Discerning and developing a godly vision begins with God’s ultimate purpose of displaying His glory and being glorified.

2. Our Seeking God: Discerning and developing a godly vision incorporates God’s commitment to seeking and saving the lost and growing them into becoming true worshipers.

3. The Seeking Church: Discerning and developing a godly vision incorporates God the Father’s sending of the Son and God the Son’s sending of the church, empowered by God the Spirit, to seek and to save the lost, and grow them into becoming true worshipers, all to the glory of God.

4. Great Commission Central: Discerning and developing a godly vision places the Great Commission front and center with this commissioning of the disciples by Jesus Christ, then and now, established as the root of both vision and strategy. What is our vision? We will go and make disciples. What is our strategy? We will actually go, centering our actions on going. In so doing, we will reach the lost and grow the found in their faith, all to the glory of God.

5. A Reached Community: Discerning and developing a godly vision puts us in alignment with God’s plan to move from multiply to multitude and focuses our ministry on realizing the outcome priority of a reached community.

6. Vision in Motion: Discerning and developing a godly vision requires us to acknowledge that vision is organic, that it is in motion. Key Vision Question 1 gets us started on the right path, while Key Vision Question 2 allows us to adjust along the way. In so doing, the lost in the community are reached and God is glorified.