Video Transcript: Vision in Motion

All right, we have reached our final video for skill number one, discerning and  developing vision as we continue with our our course, developing great  commission skills. This particular video is going to focus on the skill topic, vision  in motion. Now, in thinking about vision, one thing that I would like to explain  here is that vision is organic. Vision is organic, meaning that vision lives, it  breathes, it develops, it matures, it's fluid. It's flexible enough to make mid  course corrections. We don't want to cast it in stone. We want to give. We want  to give vision, the ability to to move with the movement of God. Now this is  important for a couple of reasons. First of all, despite our best efforts, by the  grace of God of discerning his vision for us, we are not going to get everything  exactly right, and so there might be a need for some things to be adjusted,  nuanced mid course corrections along the way. Secondly, we're going to  encounter things that we we did not see coming, things that we didn't know were out there. You know, that could be the in the form of maybe a new person, a  family coming into the church with a certain set of skills or certain experience  that we can now leverage, all manner of things can happen. I mean, let's face it,  we we can never pin God down. 100% things are going to unfold that we  weren't, that we didn't see coming. I mean, how many of us knew covid was  coming? For example, All right, so we want to realize that vision has got to be  organic, flexible. It's got to be able to be to be adjusted. Now, regardless, you  know, a healthy vision, needs to needs to have that freedom, to not be rigid.  One thing that I say all the time is don't fall in love with your methodology. Don't  fall in love with your methodology. Methodology is just a tool, and there will  come a time when that tool is no longer relevant, or there's something better  that's out there. One of my little sayings is that today's innovation is tomorrow's  rut. So we want to be very, very careful to make sure that we don't paint  ourselves in a corner with a very rigid, rigid vision. So that brings me to a  discussion of two key vision questions. Vision Question number one is this, how  does God want to express himself through our church, in our community at this  time, how does God want to express himself our church, our community at This  time now, there are four elements to this question. And by the way, this question  can be framed as a prayer, Father, how do you want to express yourself through our church in our community? At this time, what I've done in the past in utilizing  a question like this, something similar is to have all of our key leaders spend  some time alone, one on one with God, praying this prayer and seeing what  God communicates. And then we get together and we compare notes, and we  find that very often God is laying the same thought, the same concept, the same idea, on multiple people. And so that's how vision starts to bubble up out of a  team of people that are seeking God's vision. So this is a prayerful exercise. It's  not just a strategic exercise in nuts and bolts. Well, the four elements are this.  First of all, it's God's vision that we're seeking, not our own. Again, we're  discerning. We're not creating vision. We're discerning vision. So we have to be 

mindful that we are seeking the mind of God, the heart of God, and so we we  seek His leading through His Spirit. Secondly, we're talking about our church.  We're not looking at what God might be doing with some other church. There's a trend. Actually, it's been a trend for a long time now, whenever some church  does something particularly noteworthy, next thing you know. You know books  are being written and conferences are being held, and you know, everyone is  going to flock like pilgrims to find the new secret. Well, let me give you my take  on that. You know, if God is using some other church in some significant way,  hallelujah, praise God for it, benefit of the doubt. That's how God is working  through those people, that church, in that community. I can be inspired by that.  Maybe I can pick up a few pointers here and there about this or that. But the  idea is not to simply mimic what God might be doing somewhere else. God's  resources are unlimited. And so we go to him and say, God, how, how do you  want to work through us, through this particular grouping of individuals that  you've you've put together as a congregation, how do you want to use us in our  community? You know, it doesn't really matter what's working somewhere else.  What matters is what's going to work right here, where we are. We've got to  know our mission field, that domestic mission field, that is our community, that  geographic footprint, who lives there, what makes them tick? What are they  after? What are they missing? How can we step into their lives with something  meaningful that might engender an ongoing relationship, out of which we might  have the opportunity to share our faith? So it's God's vision for our church and  our community. At this time, we have to minister like it's right now we can't  Minister like it's some bygone era. I think we've all learned by now that what  used to work doesn't necessarily work anymore, plus with technology, with  various challenges that we've had to face, in terms of our culture, in terms of the pandemic, things change at lightning speed. You know, you might in the old  days, you might be able to hang with a particular thing for a couple decades. No  longer the pace of change is so rapid. Now I'm not talking about changing the  gospel or watering down the content of our faith. I'm talking about the  methodologies that we use to deliver our faith. These things need to be flexible.  So question number one, God, how do you want to express yourself through our church, our community? At this time, we spend time individually pursuing  answers to that question, we come together, we pray, we think, we read  scripture, and ultimately we come up with the approach to vision that is going to  be our approach. Second key question, what did God mean by that? This is the  retrofit. This is why I'm saying keep the tent pegs loose on your vision, because  along the way, you're going to bump into things that you didn't see coming, and  you might need to adjust I'll give you an example, the church that I went to in  Phoenix of 13, which severely declined, in part because the community. Where  the church was located, had become almost 100% Hispanic, and the the Anglo  or Caucasian church that was in there did not make any any adjustment, any 

accommodation to that. So eventually they became more or less irrelevant to  the growing community. So to their credit, they realized this, and realized that  you know a church, for a church to thrive at this location, it needs to be a  Hispanic church, a church led by a Hispanic pastor and staff, etc, etc. And so  they they first rented the building and grounds out to a Hispanic church, and  ultimately sold the church to that church at very, very, very favorable terms,  because they wanted to make sure that, you know, the the beachhead that God  had established in that community years ago was not lost. Well, that, of course,  meant that that this church was going to have to find some place else to be. So  that entailed finding where should we move to? Well, when I entered the scene,  I was informed that that decision was going to be more or less up to me, and  perhaps with some advice from my wife, I thought that was kind of strange at the time, because I didn't know anything about the area, but this group was  determined that the incoming pastor, you know, by the grace of God, would  would seek God's leading and find the right place. And I will have to say that did  happen. I don't have time to go into what confirmed all that. But just okay, just  give me the benefit of the doubt. Here, we made a move into an area of the city  that was a better demographic match for who we were as a small congregation.  But you know, we didn't have a place to meet. Initially, we went on a waiting list  to find a public school that we might be able to use on a Sunday morning. Well,  it took seven months for a school to open, but we finally opened in that new  community and began holding services on Sunday at a middle school. One of  the unique features of that relationship between us and the school district that  we leased from was that the school district would only allow churches two years  use of its facilities, and then we would have to be out. So from the day we  entered, we knew that we only had 24 months before we'd have to be  someplace else. Now that's not a very long time in the church world. But those  were the conditions that we were operating under, and so we almost  immediately began thinking about property. We didn't really have much in the  way of money. We knew that it would take a movement of God to to make it  happen, but we were reasoning that God had led us to make these decisions,  has led us to this community, so surely he would have a place for us where we  could get a piece of property and put a small building up and manage to survive  as a church in this community. You know, I think I failed to mention that the skill  topic we're talking about with this video is vision in motion. And I think you kind  of get in the feel for that first of all, it's organic, it moves, it breathes. And now  we're talking about the fact that we had to relocate. And sometimes you just  have to do things of that sort well, as time unfolded with this church, because we had such a proactive commitment to outreach and evangelism, and we created  systems to receive newcomers really well into, into the life of our church, we  began to grow. And so I would say, somewhere around 15 months or so into that two years, we were probably averaging about 75 or so attendance, maybe, 

maybe pushing toward 100 giving was not over the top, but it was stable, and  we were trusting God to lead us. And so we started to think in terms of vision.  What do we need, in terms of a footprint in the community, a place if we're going to buy a piece of property, you know, there were no church buildings that we  could purchase. This was a fairly new community. There weren't many places for churches to meet, so we knew we were going to have to buy a piece of property  and put up a small, multi purpose building, and we didn't have much money to  work with. Well, through much prayer and discussion, we decided that we would, we would trust God for roughly four acres of land. We thought that that would be ample for what we might need over the years. And of course, in a place like  Phoenix, you have to give up a lot of space for things like water retention on  your property. You've got to deal with parking and those kinds of things. So we  set our sights on four acres. We felt like God was leading us to pursue finding a  four acre parcel. So we began to search for that parcel, knowing that we didn't  have the money, but trusting that by the time we find the parcel, maybe God will  have made a way, one of the things we did was we brought an architect into the  mix, and we asked him to tell us, what could we do If we had four acres of land  in this community. What could we do with that land in terms of, say, the size of  the building, how much seating could we have? What kind of classrooms could  we fit? How many parking spaces would we need? How much acreage would  we have to devote to water retention and, you know, connecting with sewer lines and all those kinds of very, very practical nuts and bolts things. And so it was  hypothetical, but we just wanted to have sort of a bird's eye view understanding  of where this might be going. And so he did just that. And and so we took his  drawings and we we sort of looked at them as part of the vision. We have a  vision of being a church that sits on a four acre parcel with this kind of building  and so many parking spaces, etc, etc, so that we folded into our understanding  of our vision. Well, guess what? All of a sudden, God dropped 14 acres into our  laps. Now we had to pay for it, but it was offered at well under market value, and our denomination had decided to experiment with what they called, unofficially  venture loans. We couldn't qualify for the loan that we needed on conventional  standards, but they decided that this would be a kind of a venture capital type  approach, that a certain percentage of the funding that the denomination had  would be dedicated to startup type ventures, and so they approved this loan.  Well, we went from four acres to 14 in terms of projection, and we wondered,  well, what could we do with 14 acres? So we brought the architect back and  said, Listen, it seems like God's vision for this church includes a future on a 14  acre site. What would that look like? Well, after our architect did his homework,  he discovered that only nine and a half acres of that 14 was going to be  buildable due to elevation and whatnot, but still, that was more than double what we had projected. So we asked, well, what kind of building could we put on  here? How many parking spaces, etc, and we went through the entire operation 

once again. What Does God mean by this? Answer? God's vision, in terms of  the size of the operation is is much bigger, at least long term, than what we had  anticipated. Now it wasn't that we were numbers hungry. We were just reasoning that, you know, God wouldn't provide a resource that he didn't intend to use. And so we we went down that path because we were flexible, because our vision  was organic, because it could breathe. It could expand. It could it could it could  pivot. And ultimately, ultimately, about two, two and a half years before I left, we  were holding services on that property, one building, multi purpose, that was  indeed used for multiple things, seven days a week, and we allowed the  community to use that building for all kinds of things, from from homeowners  associated meetings to, You know, soccer group meetings to piano recitals. So  flexibility. Question one gets you started. How does God want to express himself through our church and our community at this time? Question Two provides the  retrofit, the adjustment, the pivot. What did God mean by that now, when you  pursue a great commission, Vision directed by God through our church and our  community at this time, with the flexibility to adjust, great things happen. Lost  people in the community are reached. God is glorified, and people grow to  maturity in Christ. Now I want to, I want to summarize the six skill topics that we  looked looked at under the skill number one, discerning and developing vision.  So by way of review, let me take us back very, very quickly through these  previous, the previous skill topics. First of all, we looked at the glory of God,  discerning and developing a godly vision begins with God's ultimate purpose,  which is his glory being glorified. We looked at our seeking God, the fact that  God is seeking and searching and saving the lost, growing them into being true  worshipers. We looked at the seeking Church, the role that we now have as the  body of Christ, the people of God, to be part of that, that mission of seeking and  saving the lost. We looked at Great Commission Central, where we realized that the Great Commission includes both vision and strategy. What is our vision? Go  and make disciples. How are we going to do that strategically? Well, we're  actually going to go. We're going to figure out what that looks like, all to the glory of God, we talked about a reached community, the projection into the future  where, if we follow God's leading as a great commission church, ultimately, we  are going to reach the community. So our vision is a picture, a snapshot of a  preferred future, a projection as to what we could be by the grace of God, if we  follow his leading. And finally, we just looked at vision in motion with those two  key questions. Now, before I wrap this up, I want to say a few words about  vision statements. Okay, I'm going to start with a little bit of a disclaimer. You  know what? What a vision statement is, not. Well, a vision statement is not a  doctrinal statement or a statement of faith, and a vision statement is not a  tagline or a catchphrase, phrase or or, you know, like a radio jingle. Here's why  I'm saying that. I'm finding that that lots of churches, when they're crafting a  vision statement. They'll include doctrinal statements, theological statements in 

the vision statement. You know, we our vision is to be a church that that honors  the authority of Scripture. Well, that's not a vision statement. That's a doctrinal  statement. Authority of Scripture is a statement of faith. Well, those kinds of  statements belong in a doctrinal statement. They belong in a statement of faith.  They don't belong in a vision statement. Vision is a picture of a reached  community, not a picture of the theology that we support. Also, a vision  statement is not something that is just somewhat frivolous, you know, a little 4,  5, 6 word phrase at the bottom of a bulletin. I know that a lot of churches, you  know, they're looking for that catch phrase, that clever statement that catches  someone's attention, but that's not that's not visionary, that's more like marketing or branding. So what I'd like to do is take a few minutes to explain my approach  to vision statements. My approach is this. I have a three tiered approach to a  vision statement, and the three tiers are, first of all, the story, secondly, the  synopsis, and finally, the slogan. Now, here's how that works. You begin with the story. Now, the story is a full, multi page narrative of everything that you're  hoping to see, whatever time frame that you're using, whether it's three years,  five years, 10 years, whatever, down the line. Don't go too far out. I would say at most go about five or six years. Okay, remember I talked about the idea of a  snapshot or video of what's happening in the church, what you are envisioning  being the description of this church X years down the line, in terms of the vision  itself, and in terms of the strategies, the how tos to get there, multiple pages so  that if someone were to read that that narrative, they would have a great  understanding of where this church is headed, perhaps why it's headed that way and how it's headed that way. Now, once the narrative has been constructed, we then reduce that narrative down to a synopsis of one or two paragraphs that  summarize the full narrative, so that if I were to read that summary, I have a  sense of, you know, the gist of the story, the highlight reel, so to speak. And then finally, there's the slogan that is, that short, pithy phrase that we might stick at  the bottom of a bulletin. Now, how do these work? Well, they work together  when, when a story is first put together, it's shared with the rank and file of the  congregation, so that they can now have a sense of the vision, and hopefully will grow to support that vision. Then, once the congregation has been exposed to  the full narrative, every time they see the synopsis, every time they see the  slogan, it opens for them the full narrative. Another use is this, when newcomers come into the church, the first tier that they're going to be seeing is probably tier  number three, the slogan they're going to see it on a banner, on the wall, on a  poster, on a bulletin, they probably won't have a good sense of what it means,  but they'll see it. They'll be familiar with it, but if they stay with the church long  enough to assimilate into the life of the church and eventually make it to the  point that they're attending a newcomer class or discovery class, enquirer class,  and the leadership is now orienting the newcomer to the church, one of the  things that you would do is share that full narrative, and that will make that 

slogan that they've already been exposed to really blossom, and it will help to  assimilate them in to the vision of the church, into the culture of the church,  because the culture is going to grow out of that vision. So for the for the person  who's already on board, when you first start with this process, they're going to  start with story to synopsis to slogan, but the newcomer coming in is going to go slogan to story, and then maybe to synopsis. But the point is, once, once the old  timers, the insiders, as well as the newcomers, are being exposed to the full  narrative, then every time they see the synopsis, every time they see the slogan, it's going to open the full vision for them and remind them of what it is we're  trying to accomplish, why that is what we're trying to accomplish, and how we're  trying to accomplish it the vision and the strategy. So when it comes to vision  statements. We're not going to make doctrinal statements. We're not going to  make statements of faith. We're going to make visionary statements, the story,  the synopsis, and eventually, the slogan. Now this completes number six, our  final video in skill number one. Skill number one being discerning and  developing vision. And so with our next video, we are going to move on. We're  going to move on to skill number two, casting vision and creating ownership.  And that first skill topic is going to be private vision casting. May God bless your  ongoing studies. Amen