Video Transcript: Public Vision Casting
Welcome back. We're going to continue with our course developing great commission skills. Last time we talked about private vision casting, this time, we're going to move into public vision casting. Now, I realize that I spoke very negatively about public vision casting before, and I do believe that private vision casting is the way to start. It's the most effective way to cast vision and create ownership. But there is a place for public vision casting, for broadly casting vision in the public arena. What's going to happen, you see, is that the things that we do in public to communicate vision are going to be in support of private vision casts, and they're going to be complementary to private vision casting. Now one one principle to think of up front when it comes to public vision casting is that we need to give the vision high visibility. One of the things that will hurt the vision process will be that people don't know that something's really, really going on. They heard about it at the beginning. There was a little bit of a talk, maybe a few announcements, and then those those leaders who are in the process of developing and discerning vision and then beginning to cast vision have gone silent, and there's a sense that nothing's going on. If we're not hearing about anything, apparently nothing is going on. So it's very important that this vision be given very high visibility throughout the congregation, so that people begin to realize that, wow, something really is happening, things are moving, things are progressing. And we're hearing more and more and more, and we're seeing progress along the way. Now, when it comes to the art of communicating ideas, the art of casting vision. I want to recommend a book, and this book comes from two brothers, Chip and Dan Heath, both of whom are quite accomplished, and they have come up with a model, the success model of communication, communicating ideas, communicating vision, the interests of this particular book, which is called Made to Stick. By the way, the idea here is, how can you get your ideas to stick with people, utilizing these communication ideas to help the idea or the communication stick with people. That's going to help to move the vision forward, that's going to help to give the vision high visibility. So as you see there on your screen, success stands for these various concepts. S is for simple. Make sure that your communication of your idea of your of your vision is is clear and simple. Secondly, the U unexpected. It's very helpful to have something in the communication that's a bit of a surprise, something new, a new twist, a spin, a play on words, something that's unexpected, that really grabs my attention, the first C concrete, make sure that your communications are bringing clarity, that there's nothing vague, there's nothing mysterious, there's nothing hidden in what what you are communicating that is concrete. It's crystal clear. Credibility is a big factor. Is it believable? Let me give you an example. Recently, I became aware of a church that has put forth a new a new element of vision, and the vision is called V 30 vision for 2030 V 30 and the one particular central element of this vision is they have a desire, an intent, a hope, a dream, a strategy, a vision, Of seeing 1500 people come to
Christ by way of profession of faith through their church between now and 2030 is that credible? Well, I have to say this at first glance, not so much. It seems like these folks are overshooting, overstating. But if you know this church, you know
that it has grown quite large over the 25 years of its existence, and it has been very effective in terms of seeing people coming to Christ by way of profession of faith. So, yes, it's a bold vision, but given the context of who and what this church is, and the location, the you know, the population around this church. Yes, it's bold. Yes, it requires faith. It's a real stretch. You're sticking your neck out, you're taking a risk. But there is credibility. When I first looked at this and began to consider with various elements of this church, I came away thinking to myself, You know what? I think, by the grace of God, that this vision really indeed could be realized that this is not just a case of hyperbolic language being slapped on a banner and stuck up in the foyer of the church. This is a well thought, well prayed through crafted, discerned vision, and these folks are really going to go for it, and I truly believe, by the grace of God, that they're going to see at least 1500 people come to faith through their ministry in the next seven, eight years. So credibility is a very important factor. E emotional, you know, we we want to tie our ideas into something that that tugs at the heart. This is not just about data or information or black and white statistics. It's a matter of the heart. So let's, let's tap into empathy. Let's tap into compassion. Let's tap into the heart of the matter, as we are communicating our ideas, communicating our vision. And finally, S stories, people are moved by stories. Stories, paint pictures when you can tell a story, particularly if it's a it's a true story, you know, it's a testimony, it's a proof of concept that we're borrowing to tap into, to help explain our new idea, our new vision, that can be extremely valuable. People love stories. So, yeah, okay, I'm a little bit disturbed that the Heath brothers left out an S to really spell the word success. I feel like with a little effort, they could have filled in that blank. But okay, whatever. I like this model, I like this book, and so I highly recommend that you take a look at this success model and make sure, again, make sure that credibility is there. You know, is your vision credible? Is your vision believable? If it's not, if it's just words on a page. If you've set the bar so high that people would just wag their heads and say, Man, I don't know what those people are thinking about. There's no way this is going to happen. It's very difficult to garner support when people can't believe what you have, what you have put out there. So credibility, big deal. Now, let's, uh, let's look at at an example. A typical vision for the average church might be a vision for revitalization. You know, many churches struggle to grow. They struggle to reach people with the gospel. Many churches today are in decline. They're struggling financially. They don't have enough leadership to go around and and so it's natural that a pastor of such a church, that the leaders of such a church. Church would be thinking about revitalization. We have a vision of our church as it is revitalized, and so there might be a desire to commit to a revitalization process
of some sort, and leverage that process in order to fulfill a revitalization vision. The challenge, of course, in part, is going to be a credibility challenge. Credibility must overcome. Incredibility, I might go so far as to say that most of the time the initial vision that is cast before a group of people is received with with caution, with skepticism, with a sense that I don't know if these folks are really going to be Trying to do what they say, or are they just coming up with a campaign to try to generate a little bit of enthusiasm and and momentum? So there's a there's going to be a need for credibility to overcome incredibility. Now think about this. Why is it so difficult? Why is it so difficult for people to buy in to revitalization? Why is the vision for revitalization often a hard sell? Well, I want to give you a little grocery list of reasons why, these are the typical things that I have run into over the years as a revitalization trainer, coach and consultant, so negative elements that work against the credibility of a revitalization vision, number one, revitalization program malaise. What I'm referring to here is the fact that for folks that have been in the church for a while, they have probably heard this kind of thing before. Somewhere in the history of that church, they have been through a revitalization campaign. They've tried to work through some process. You know, someone read a book, went to a conference, got inspired, tried to move people in that direction. So they gave it a try. And it seems that it went nowhere. In some churches, there are several past attempts that have not produced positive results. So for some folks, once they hear, Oh, here we go again. You know, another pie in the sky, revitalization concept, this is probably not going to work for us. So there is negativity. Secondly, resource shortages. I want you to think about the tension between resources and faith. There are some in their in their faith experience, they've they've seen the Lord work in situations where the obstacles were many, the obstacles were significant, and yet still the Lord provided. And of course, that can build a person's faith over time. And so, because of our faith in the Lord, we reason that if, if, if God has moved us, has led us in a particular direction, that even if we don't have the resources at hand to follow through that eventually we will that if we follow this path by faith, that it's going to play out positively. On the other hand, there are those that maybe don't have that strong of faith. They've been burned a few times in the past. And so they look at an opportunity, a vision, an idea, and they think, Well, what are the resources that are going to be required? And do we have those resources? And if we don't have those resources, we don't have the people, we don't have the dollars, we don't have the time, the energy, if we don't have these resources in hand at the moment, there's no point in even starting down this path, because we're not going to be able to finish. So we don't step out in faith. We are restricted. We are handcuffed by our lack of resources. Now we don't want to dare God to do things that are absurdly overstated, but we do want to be able to step out in faith, trusting in his leading, even if the resources are not there. So finding that balance is important. But for some folks, if the resource shortage is
clearly evident, they're not going to be able to buy in to the new vision. The next element has to do with objective faith versus subjective faith. Now there's plenty of evidence in Scripture about the power of God, the capability of God, the things that that Jesus said and did in His earthly ministry, you know, things like Jesus saying that that disciples should be able to move mountains if they have faith, give sight to the blind. All kinds of miraculous things have happened by faith. And here's the thing, most folks in the church that have been in the church for a while, that have been people of faith for a while, they've truly been committed to Jesus, Christ as both their Savior and Lord. They understand that these things are real. They trust in the power of God. They understand the power of the spirits moving in our lives. But that understanding, very often, only operates on an objective level. You know? They know that God has power to make things happen, but they struggle subjectively to see God move in such a way in their church. So yeah, it's not that we don't think God is capable. It's that we just don't see that capability playing out in our particular context. Therefore we react negatively to this new vision. Here's a couple more isolation pastor think now this is a this is a little bit nuanced. Let me unpack this for you. Isolation pastor, think I've run into many situations where pastors in particular and sometimes pastors in combination with you know, a couple of leaders will feel like they have been set aside. They've been cut off from the group. This is particularly true when a new pastor comes into a negative ministry situation, you know, you've got a church that, say, in long term plateau or decline, it's a struggling church that it's trending downward, a new pastor comes in, and that Pastor feels like an outsider. He doesn't really have the ear of broad leadership. He doesn't have the ear of the congregation. And you know, the perspective of the new pastor is that he's always going to be new, he's always going to be different. He's always going to be the new guy. I, I, I've known pastors that have been in in the pastorate of a particular church for 20 years or more, and there's still some folks in the church that refer to that Pastor as the, quote, new pastor, isolation. And so I hear comments from from pastors, sometimes other leaders, they'll say to me, well, Ken, I feel like I'm all alone here, and these sweeping statements like they're all against me. No, no one gets it. I feel like I understand what needs to be done, but they don't, and there's sort of a me against the world attitude going on. The pastor doesn't see himself, herself, as part of the group. He's an he's an outsider. And when the pastor, when leaders are feeling isolated from the congregation at large, it's very difficult for that set of leaders to to embark on a new vision, particularly if it's a new vision that is is challenging. And here's the thing, Oftentimes more than one of these elements is at play at the same time. So if you've got a church that's suffering from revitalization program malaise, for example, and then you've got a new pastor or even a long term pastor that's feeling isolated well now, you know, these things start to compound, one on top of the other, and it becomes more and more different,
difficult. One final element I've labeled this clandestine leader ops operations. What I mean by this is that sometimes a small set of leaders will operate more or less in the dark that other staff, other leaders, congregants, don't really know what's going on. High visibility is not being given. Communication is not forthcoming, and people are wondering, what are those guys doing that are supposed to be developing this vision for our church? What are they up to? Well, here's the thing, when people don't know what's going on, they start to fill in the blank. They start to imagine what might be going on. And no surprise, those imaginings are often going to be worst case scenarios, particularly if there's any kind of lack of credibility in the vision in the first place, or lack of say trust in that group of people that are crafting this vision. And so when, when those who are responsible are working more or less in the dark, people become wary, and any hope of credibility is destroying. So this idea of clandestine leader ops stands in stark contrast to the idea of high visibility. You know, we want this new vision to be spotlighted. We want it to be highly visible throughout the church. Now, here's another word of caution that I want to share with you in regard to this idea of casting vision and developing ownership. The word of caution is this, avoid ultimatums in public vision casting. Now I've already commented on this in the previous session, but I just want to reinforce that don't roll out the new and improved vision in front of a large group of people, and in that public setting call for folks to cast the vote or or, you know, sign on the dotted line, state their their support publicly. It's very, very difficult to get credible responses. What you end up with, oftentimes are what I'm going to call false positives. They go along for the moment. They don't want to disrupt, they don't want to cause problems. So they say, Sure, I'm in, but they're not really in. So the word to the wise here is to avoid ultimatums in public vision casting now, kind of going along with that, the place to do that, that idea of giving people an opportunity to sign up to be part of it, that's what you do in the private setting. I've done this so many times in my ministry, where I've I've spent the time to fully inform people. I've had those private conversations with people. I've explained everything that I could, I've answered questions, I've removed obstacles, and I get to that point where I feel like I think this person is there, I think he or she or they understand the scope of what what this vision is, and I'm sensing that now is the time to ask for them to step into this, to play a role, to be Part of it. And so I might say something like this. I would say something like, Does this make sense to you? Could you see us going in this direction? If the answer is yes, then I move on, and I would ask something like this. Well, if we, if we were to go in this direction, could you see yourself being part of this? Now, what role might you play as we move forward? Now, there are times when folks are positive toward division in general, but they don't quite know where they fit. Well, see, I've done my homework before. I'm having this conversation, and I've got some ideas based on what I know about that person or that couple of people, I have a
sense of how they might be involved. So if they don't have a sense of how they can be involved, I might say something like this. I might say, well, you know, I've given this some thought, and I could see you serving in this way. How does that strike you? You see, I'm trying to help people place themselves inside the vision,
supporting the vision with a role of participation beginning to be defined, because, as I do so, I'm not just casting vision now, I'm creating ownership. And of course, if people are not ready, they're not ready. And so I'm fine with saying to people, you know what? We don't need to really drive this home tonight. Think about it, pray about it, and if it's okay with you, could I circle back, you know, in a few weeks, touch base with you. See where you are with this. See if you have any other questions. I've never had someone say no, don't bother. You know, folks want to serve God well. They want their leaders to lead. They want to be part of something important, part of something significant. And you're just helping. You're just helping them find their spot in God's vision for your church. And remember in that this partnership of public and private vision casting. Vision casting to create ownership leverages the public vision casting to complement and support its efforts in private vision casting. That's how this works. These two work together in tandem. You know, we we rely heavily on the effectiveness of the private vision cast, but we complement that with the high visibility and the energy and the momentum of the public vision cast. And we put all these together, you will find that you are effectively casting vision, and you are successfully building ownership. Now that wraps up our session for this time, as we have considered public vision casting when we continue with our study next time, we'll be taking a look at the skill topic levels of commitment. You know, people don't go from not being committed to being fully committed in one move. There's a progression, and we'll unpack that progression when we get together next time. So may God bless your ongoing studies to build up your ministry capability on his behalf in the name of Jesus. Amen.