Reading: 2.1—Private Vision Casting

Skill 2: Casting Vision & Creating Ownership

In the King James Version of the Bible, Proverbs 29:18a is rendered, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” As such, we might consider that Skill 1: Discerning & Developing Vision, is, at its most basic, necessary to keep people alive, perhaps not literally in a biological sense, but surely in terms of interest, motivation, and drive to stay the course and move forward. Mancini remarks, “What’s special about God’s vision is how it becomes ours and lives as ours. We can never forget God as the sources of vision; but we also cannot strip it of personal, visceral, and concrete reality in the leader’s life…We live in it,” (Church Unique: Mancini, p. 73).

Consider Proverbs 29:18a in reverse and you’ll find another truth, “Where there are no people, the vision perishes.” What separates true vision from being simply wishful thinking or even delusion? Gathering people around that vision and mobilizing them into actions that move the vision forward are what propels vision from theory to practice, from hopes and dreams to desired and measurable outcomes. This gathering and mobilization is the focus of Skill 2: Casting Vision & Creating Ownership.

Vision Casting is the means by which Creating Ownership takes root, so, casting vision ineffectively fails to create ownership. The objective of Vision Casting is not simply to distribute information but to solidify support for and ownership of the vision that is being cast. Successful Vision Casting demands that the vision being cast is fully heard, understood, and embraced. Again, this is far more than just getting the vision out; this is getting the vision out in such a way that it is well received by the person, team, or group that is being recruited into the vision. Once a vision is discerned and developed, it must be cast properly so that there is maximum opportunity for people to receive and embrace ownership of that vision. Remember: without the people, a vision will perish.

2.1 Private Vision Casting: Vision casting to create ownership is much more effective in the private rather than the public setting, yet church leadership tends to cast vision through platform communication in large group settings and large-scale email blasts. This approach will get the word out to many people in an efficient way, but efficiency is not the same as effectiveness. One-on-one, one-on-couple, and one-on-small group or team are much more effective if the objective is sustainable ownership.

Consider, for example, the proverbial town hall or congregational meeting. Such a setting, though well intentioned, is fraught with problems. The rationale is that bringing everyone together at the same time is an efficient way to cast vision and to afford everyone the opportunity to ask questions or make comments. The reality is that many people, perhaps most people, will not speak in a large public gathering, so, they, in fact, have NOT been given the opportunity to ask their questions or to make their comments. When those people leave at the end of the meeting, vision casting leaders have no accurate read on what these people are thinking and whether or not they are willing or able to provide sustainable ownership. On the flip side, there are some people that will never NOT speak in a large public gathering, but will seize the moment to grab center stage and dominate the room. Often such people, by virtue of their strong opinions, wield strong influence among the crowd, and, if their perspectives are negative toward the vision, the crowd can be swayed negatively. This is the antithesis of what vision casting seeks to accomplish.

Another flaw in the large-scale presentation has to do with time and exposure. Leaders who have discerned and developed the vision have done so over a period of time during which they have prayed, studied information, and discussed matters among themselves. In other words, they have had time to process information, float trial balloons, and revise formulations before arriving at the polished vision that is to be presented to the full assembly. They have traveled through a journey of discovery that has led them to arrive at their final destination, a discerned and developed vision. However, the assembly has not been on that journey of discovery, has not wrestled with questions and issues along the way, and has a limited context for the vision that’s being cast. While the vision casters have seen the vision emerge over time through serious deliberations, the vision is dropped on the vision receivers out of context and often seems to have come out of nowhere. The large setting doesn’t afford the opportunity for deep discussion, so, toward the end of the large public unveiling, vision casters call for support and ownership when the assembly, as individuals, is not ready to make that kind of commitment. So, either they express their concerns and fail to offer support, or, due to pressure, they offer support but, rather than coming from commitment, this support actually represents a false positive. The assembly gives apparent support but that support is not true ownership. Vision casters leave the meeting thinking that the mission has been accomplished, but they have, in fact, done more harm than good.

The following elements inform the strategy of private vision casting to create ownership:

The Divide & Serve Principle: Divide and conquer has been leveraged over time as a tactic for overcoming an opposing or enemy force. In this context, the goal is not to conquer an enemy but to serve a congregation by uniting around a common vision that has been rightly discerned and developed. Though this objective is quite different, the principle of dividing, or separating a congregation into its component parts, is credible. The concept is to spread a congregation out widely so that vision casters can conduct one-on-one, one-on-couple, and one-on-small group or team gatherings. Though this technique is labor intensive on the front end, it ultimately saves time by avoiding future crises that erupt from shallow broadcast vision casting, lack of information, and/or a lack of understanding. Positive responses to vision in this setting are true positives that do create sustainability as one true positive is added to another and another and so on.

Conversation NOT Presentation: In the large setting, vision casting tends to center on information distribution through a platform presentation. Typically, these presentations follow a format that includes multiple speakers, handouts, visual aids such as Power Point projections, statistics, demographics, and the like. The goal is to inform a congregation in a thorough way, building a preponderance of evidence that promotes the vision that is being cast. I won’t repeat flaws already revealed regarding a large-scale meeting of this kind, but I will simply say that evidence from the field of ministry reveals time and time again that this methodology is, at best, unproductive, and at worst, can actually lead to open conflict with the vision.

So, when planning to cast vision to create ownership, it’s far better to frame the information that needs to be both shared with people and then gleaned from people as conversation while avoiding presentation as the methodology of choice. Conversation engages people in dialogue, in give and take, as opposed to the monologue nature of presentation that leaves little room for information exchange.

Answering Questions & Removing Obstacles: The role of the vision caster is to create ownership of that vision. To do so, the vision caster will share information, but will also answer questions and remove obstacles with equal importance. Whenever someone has an unanswered question or is blocked by some obstacle in his or her thinking, that person will be unable to commit to ownership of that vision. As important as sharing the vision is for the vision caster, listening to what people have to say is more important. The vision caster who listens well is able to draw out questions and spot obstacles that need to be removed, even if those questions and obstacles are unspoken. Resistance to a vision is often the product of miscommunication, misinformation, misperception, and misunderstanding. These can be exposed and overcome in a small private setting.

Opportunity for Commitment: The private setting, where a vision caster is engaged in dialogue with one, two, or a few people, affords the opportunity to ask for commitment to the vision. This is not handled as an ultimatum and no lines in the sand are to be drawn, but when all the information has been clarified, all questions have been answered, and all obstacles have been removed, a wise vision caster can effectively invite someone to get on board to support the vision and, perhaps, even to begin playing a role in further vision casting. If so, great. If not, the vision caster should ask for an opportunity to circle back to continue the conversation at a future time. When all steps have been taken and a person is still not ready to make a commitment, understand that people are wired differently, and some will commit sooner while others will commit later, and some will not commit at all. Allow people the freedom to be who they are and take all the time they need to make an informed decision with which they are completely comfortable. When you get a “Yes,” you want it to be a true “Yes.”

An Example of Private Effectiveness: In the early 90s, I was called to pastor a severely declined church whose congregation consisted of a very small remnant. My assignment was to lead that church through revitalization. Part of the decline was the result of the community’s having transitioned to being mostly Hispanic while the church made no accommodation to the community’s changing culture. Before I was called, the church had leased its buildings and property to a Hispanic church and moved into a small storefront nearby, having decided to relocate to a new location upon the new pastor’s arrival. I was that new pastor. These decisions and actions had been undertaken by the elders of the church and simply provided to me as information.

Soon after my arrival, however, I was tipped off by one of the elders that another elder and his wife had a very different vision of what they would like to see happen. They were the oldest in the congregation and lived in a house across the street from the original church site that used to be the church’s parsonage. Their vision was for our remnant to return to the original site and relaunch our ministry with the two of them living directly across the street. Though there had been many group discussions about the relocation, these two had never verbalized any of this to the full group, and I was completely in the dark.

Upon learning of this, I called this elder and scheduled a time to go to their house and meet with the two of them to discuss the future of the church and their role in it. Our time together was a wonderful two and a half hours of their filling me in on their history with the church, their hopes, dreams, and fears, and their perspective on what they would like to see unfold in the months and years ahead. Did you catch that? We’re talking about a two and a half-hour conversation with two people that rarely uttered a word in the larger group setting, even when that larger group was quite small. I was able to lay out the vision that the rest of us had committed to and explain all the reasons why that course of action was best and seemed in line with God’s vision for us. Further, I explained how our moving back into the former building, and putting the Hispanic church out, would interfere with the wonderful ministry that this Hispanic church was forging in the, now, Hispanic community. There was laughter, there were tears, and, in the end, both committed to the new vision and both took on leadership and service roles in moving our tiny church toward that vision.

Vision casting to create ownership is much more effective in private settings rather than in public settings, though most church leadership attempts to mobilize people through platform communication in large group settings and through email or snail mail information blasts. Emphasize Private Vision Casting.