Video Transcript: Private Vision Casting
Welcome. We're continuing with our course developing great commission skills, and with this session, we're moving into a new skill, the second skill on our list, and this skill is referred to as casting vision and creating ownership once vision
has been discerned and developed by leaders of the church, in order for that vision to go any place, we have to involve other people, we have to cast that vision throughout the congregation and develop ownership throughout the congregation, and ultimately, as newcomers are coming in as the outcome of our focus on Great Commission ministry, we'll need to cast vision with them and develop their ownership in the vision as well. So I want to start by taking a look at a verse from Proverbs, and we're going to look at that verse in the King James Version. It says this, where there is no vision, the people perish. Where there is no vision, the people perish. Now, when you think about this particular statement literally, it seems that life itself is dependent on having a vision. Now I don't know that we can claim that people are literally going to biologically die if they don't have a vision, but I think the point is well taken if people don't have a vision, a sense of future, a sense of hope, a sense of direction, a sense of destination. They can just wither on the vine. We need to keep their interest, their motivation, their drive up, and not just for the sake of having motivation or drive. We want that motivation and drive to be directed towards something specific, and that specific thing is God's vision of having a church go and make disciples, of expanding the kingdom. Will Mancini has a book called church unique, and he says this, what's special about God's vision is how it becomes ours and lives as ours. We can never forget God as the source of vision, but we also cannot strip it of personal, visceral and concrete reality in the leader's life we live in it. So I think that captures the essence of this idea that without without vision, people perish. They need it like they need oxygen. Now here's the thought. I'm not going to claim that this is in the Bible, but I'd like for you to think about this phrase, where there is no vision, the people perish. In reverse, it looks like this, where there are no people, the vision perishes, where there are no people, the vision perishes. Now what separates true vision from simply being wishful thinking or even delusion? Well, gathering people around that vision, mobilizing them into action, action that moves the vision forward. That's what propels vision from theory to practice, from hopes and dreams to desired and measurable outcomes. So that's where we want to head with this, the idea that we can create strategies for casting vision and creating ownership now the particular type of vision, casting and ownership. Creation that we're going to talk about in this session is private vision casting, the things that we do directly with with one person a handful of people. Now here's the thing, vision casting is how creating ownership takes root. So it's important that we be effective in casting vision and creating ownership. The objective is not simply to spread information, but to solidify support for the vision, ownership of the vision. Successful vision casting demands that the vision be fully heard, fully understood, fully embraced.
Now again, this is far more than just getting the word out. This is getting it out in a way that it's very well received by a group of people that are going to dive in, roll up their sleeves and participate in that vision. And once vision is discerned and developed, it must be cast properly, so that there is maximum opportunity for people to receive that vision and embrace that vision with full ownership of the vision. Remember, without the vision, people will perish, but without the people, the vision will perish. So we're going to talk about private vision casting as we think about private vision casting, realize this, this concept, it's going to be much more effective to work with people in private, one on one, than it is to work in large groups of people. Unfortunately, though, most churches, as they look into casting vision, their tendency is to want to cast vision in these broad scale operations, you know, big platform presentations to lots of people, or, you know, email blasts to everyone on the list, thinking that somehow that's the efficient way to do it. Well, it is efficient in terms of getting the word out to a lot of people, but it's not effective. And here is the principle, efficiency is not the same as effectiveness. We've got to be very careful about how we do these things. Efficiency is not the same as effectiveness. So let me, let me talk a little bit about why that is. You know, many churches, as they approach vision casting, they will start with a congregational meeting, or some folks will refer to it as the town hall meeting. Now in this large scale presentation, here's the thought process. Let's put together a really solid presentation that's very thorough, that's inspirational, that's informational, and let's get all of our people together, and we can cast that vision. We can we can present this direction that we're going to take as a church at once to everyone. That'll save a lot of time. It'll get the word out, and everyone will be on board. Everyone will have heard the same thing at the same time, and so we'll be covering our bases. Here's the problem. We think that somehow that is going to be a way of treating everyone equally. And what I'll hear pastors and leaders say is, well, we want to give everyone a chance to hear and we want to give everyone a chance to ask their questions. Here's the problem, though, the average person cannot, will not speak up in a large scale meeting. So when you open the floor for questions and comments, yes, you are giving people an opportunity to speak sort of but in truth, most people won't do that. They can't do that. Fear of public speaking is a major phobia, and so they don't say what's on their mind. They don't ask the question that they'd like to have answered. They don't make the comment that they'd really like to make. So they just stuff that and don't participate. The flip side is you have some people. You have some people that, well, they can't not speak in a group. We have some people that want to dominate the conversation, dominate the floor, and so they very readily will speak up and share their point of view. Now, many times, folks that have that type of personality are key influencers within a larger group. And of course, their influence is now being spread among everyone who's hearing what they have to say. And if that's a negative influence, if, if their
position is going contrary to the vision, not accepting the vision that can negatively impact lots of folks. So you know, whenever you roll a vision out in front of a large group, you are putting that vision at risk, and you're not truly giving people an opportunity to say what's on their minds, because they just won't speak up in a group. So my caution is to avoid that large scale presentation. Now another, another element involved in the large scale presentation is has to do with time that's passing, as well as exposure to the vision. You know, whenever a group of leaders is charged with a responsibility, in this case, discerning and developing leaders, well, typically, they do their job. They're thorough, they they take it seriously, they're committed, and they do what they've been asked to do, and so over a period of days, weeks, months, hopefully not years, because that would be too long an investment, the momentum would be lost. But typically, a team of people that's going to present a vision to a full congregation is a team of people that has really worked at this for a significant period of time. It's like they've been on a journey to arrive at the vision that they now want to share. And all along the way, they have wrestled with various questions. They have researched. They've discussed things among themselves. They prayed about this. They've sought the leading of the Lord. And so their journey has been a journey of many, many, many steps that has led them to this destination of here's the vision that we have arrived at. This is the place that we believe God would have us be, and we want to share that with you. The problem, though, is that the folks that are hearing this in this large scale presentation have not been on this journey. They haven't experienced the various things that have been discussed along the way. They they haven't wrestled with issues, with with challenges, with problems. They haven't done the research. They haven't spent time in prayer and discussion. And so in a sense, they're coming at this with no point of reference. They just know that, hey, there's a team of people working on a new vision for our church, but I'm not really involved. And then all of a sudden, boom, here's the new vision. Well, they don't know where it came from. They haven't experienced a journey. They're only seeing the destination, and so it's difficult for them to understand what why would we do this? How did we get to here? So it's very important that we we allow people the opportunity to experience a little bit of that journey, even if it's vicarious. And when we speak in large groups, it's difficult to allow them to join into the journey. Whereas when we're working with people in in one on one settings, or with a couple or with a small group, there's plenty of opportunity for give and take, to take the time to explain here's where we were, here's what we thought, here's some of the issues we wrestled with, and here's where we have arrived. So the town hall meeting, the large scale meeting, is something that I definitely want to caution against. One turn or phrase that I would use in this would be to say this, when it comes to large groups, don't use the large group setting to try to sell the vision. Use the large scale setting to celebrate the vision
after it's already been owned as a result of private vision casting, and once you know that the majority of people are on board. The majority of people fully understand. The majority of people fully support the upcoming vision. Now you can have the large scale meeting, and you can celebrate the direction that God is taking you. Now I want to share a handful of elements that are part of private vision casting to create ownership. The first one I call the divide and serve principle on the heels of our discussion about avoiding the large scale in order to get to the small scale, what we want to do is is divvy up the congregation into bite sized pieces, one on one, a married couple, a small group of people, and we can divide these. Out into these separate groups and meet with them one on one. So the idea of divide has a couple of connotations. One is, we divide the group out into small units, but we're also going to divide the vision casters out. If we've got a team of folks that have developed this vision, we're going to divide that team. And you know, each person on the team will take responsibility for casting vision with a certain number of those smaller units. We're not going to ask one person, most likely the pastor. We're not going to ask one person to do all of the vision casting. We're going to have the entire team involved in the vision casting and meeting with these different groups. So we start with the divide and serve principle. We divide people into small units, we divide up our team, and we serve them by taking the time we need to fully inform, to thoroughly cast vision and to effectively create ownership. Now this can be labor intensive, but I tell you, what's more labor intensive is when you don't do this, and then, in the middle of the vision cast with trying to get large groups of people on board, something blows up, and you have to start to backpedal and rebuild and fix things. That is not only labor intensive, but it can be very destructive to the idea of casting vision and creating ownership second element, conversation, not presentation. When it comes to casting vision, don't think about making a speech. Don't think about getting up on a platform. Think about weaving vision casting into your private conversations. Sure, there are times when you might set up an appointment to meet with a person, a couple, a small group specifically to share vision, but there are lots of informal times when you might be connecting with people. Obviously, at church, before the service, in the hallway, in the parking lot, you run into people. You might go to lunch with someone. After church, you might run into them at the grocery store. There's all kinds of things that happen informally in terms of connecting with people, and we want to take advantage of those times to cast vision, but we don't want to shift over into presentation mode. We just want to weave casting vision into normal, smooth, informal conversation. And so we need, we need to have a plan of how we might share vision when we only have a short period of time, or a little bit longer, or an extensive period of time. So, you know, we need the short presentation, the medium presentation and the long presentation, and we need to have a plan how to do that, how to gauge what we need to cover, what are
the most important things. How can we move this vision along now we're not pushing people to jump on board. We're just trying to help them understand, to hear, to understand, and ultimately to embrace the vision. Number three, answering questions and removing obstacles. The challenge to vision casting is not so much that that people will be against the vision. The challenge is that they won't fully understand the vision. I mean, you think you've communicated clearly, but we just know from experience, from observation, from study, communication is very dicey, and we can think that we have thoroughly covered something, but for whatever reason, the person or the people that we're speaking with just don't quite lock in, and so they need clarification. They have questions. They're wondering, why? Why would we do this instead of that? How did that idea come about? So there are going to be questions that come up now, questions should be welcomed, because there are opportunities to help people gain clarity. They're opportunities to help people increase their ownership. And then secondly, there's removing obstacles. Um, there are times when people just can't get on board. And we don't exactly know why, we might ask a question like this. We might say, so what exactly is it that you're struggling with? What? Why? Why is this something that you you can't see yourself getting behind, and as you begin to uncover what those obstacles are, the chances are very good that there's been a misunderstanding, a miscommunication, and you'll have an opportunity to clarify and remove that obstacle. So as you are answering questions, as you are removing obstacles, you're giving people the opportunity to own that vision. And then finally, when it comes to getting people involved, one thing I want to caution against is trying to get people to sign up, you know, to raise their hands to stand up to sign on a document. Hey, I'm in a come up front. We don't want to do that in the large scale settings. We put people on the spot. And as I've already said, that they're not fully on board yet. So one of the things I've seen is church leaders at the at the end of a large scale presentation, they'll have some response mechanism. So all of you that are ready to get behind our new vision to trust God and move forward, raise your hand, or stand up or come down here to the front and we're going to have a time of prayer, something that's very demonstrative that you're asking them to do that says, hey, I get it. I'm in well, people aren't ready for that in the long, large scale setting. And if they, if they do respond positively in that way, it's a false positive. They're responding just because they're on the spot. They're responding just because they see that other people are responding. And you know, they don't want to be the one that held back. So they go ahead and raise their hand. They sign on the dotted line. They come down front, but inside, in their hearts, in their minds, they're not on board. They're not convinced and that that false positive is going to dissipate the moment they leave the room. So the time to seek commitment to the vision is in the private setting, not necessarily the very first time with a particular person in the private setting, but eventually, when you
know the questions have been answered, the obstacles have been removed, you know the person understands the attitude toward division is very positive at that point, you might ask, So is this something that you would like to be a part of? And that's how you draw people into owning the vision. Now I want to give you an example of such a case in my ministry. You know, when I did move to Phoenix, Arizona to become the pastor of that severely declined church. I had been told in advance that, hey, everybody's on board, and we've already made this decision to relocate the church, to turn the church building and property over to the Hispanic church, and you know, that's our future, and we were, we're asking you as the incoming pastor to be the leader toward that future. But within a few weeks of arriving, I discovered that there was one couple that didn't quite see it that way, and no one had told them categorically that that this absolutely was going to happen. Now they had another vision in mind, and their vision was to return to the original property and reestablish the church as it had been some years before we all knew that that was not going to happen, but no one had really sat down with them to talk this through and explain to them that it wasn't going to happen and to help them understand that, you know, this was a false hope that they had in their minds. So once I came to be aware that this was the situation, I called the husband, and I asked if I could come over. Meet with them. So we set up a time. I went over to their home, and I sat down with them, and this was a this was a one on one, just me and the two of them. We were there for well over two hours in discussion. And I won't take the time to go into all the things that were said, but it got emotional for them. But ultimately I, I said something like this. I said, You know what? I really appreciate your sharing your perspective with me. I appreciate your point of view, and I fully understand why you see this the way you see it this, but I really can't, in good conscience, let you continue to think that what you would like to see happen is a possibility. This community has become almost 100% Hispanic. The Hispanic church that now occupies the building is doing a wonderful job of reaching this community with the gospel, worshiping God, growing people in their faith, and it just doesn't make any sense for us to displace them and reclaim the building, reclaim the ministry, when we just don't have any Any reasonable hope of being effective. So I know that's disappointing to you, but I want you to think about something. We're going to be moving we have found a location. It's a bit of a drive from here, so if you don't want to make that drive, if you want to find a church closer to you, I understand that, but we need your help, and what God is going to do through this, this new version of us is going to be very exciting. It's going to be very important, and I would love for you to be part of it. Do you think you could do you think you could do that? Well, they looked at each other, they thought about it for a moment, and the husband said to me, you know, Ken, I think we could and so they plugged in with us. They made the move. They played a vital role in the relaunch of this church, and I am forever grateful for their contribution.
Now, this is what happens when you emphasize private vision casting. Private vision casting is where the action is. If you really want to make things happen in a positive way of casting vision and creating ownership. You need to do this in the private setting, the very personal informal. Sit around the living room and talk about God's vision, pray together, answer questions, remove obstacles. That is the way that vision moves forward. Private vision casting. Now that completes our video on this particular topic. We'll continue next time with the skill topic, public vision casting, despite what I said, the negatives of that big public display. There is a place for that that works in a complementary way with with private vision casting. So next time we will move into public vision casting. Now May God bless you as you continue to study, as you continue to prepare to serve him well, amen.