vision

the ability to articulate and paint a verbal picture of a preferred future is a key function of leadership, yet quite often i have found, that it’s the least area that leaders work on. once  a year i force myself to sit and work through the vision of where we are heading as a church/congregation. and i will be honest that it’s a hard process to go through.   

andy stanley’s “visioneering” and “making vision stick” are great books that help. and learning from bill hybels and the willow creek team, are always insightful and helpful, but nothing can substitute from the hard task of sitting and thinking and praying and waiting, and listening. and then of formulating and thinking some more, and percolating, and mulling, and praying, and talking, and listening some more.    

we’ve decided at our church that we would be a church that seeks to engage the world around us, and not to lose focus on that mission. yes, there are lots of churches that are suppose to do that, what’s unique about ours? i don’t know if being unique is the goal! i just think that it’s important for us to be great at what we’ve been called to do. i think it’s more important for us to have been obedient to God. we’re going to reach people far away from God! we’re going to continue to be relevant to ‘outsiders’, and we’re going to need to continue to look for ways to keep engaging those outside the faith.  

God has a dream. in that dream, people would have relationship with Him. we’ve pretty much messed it all up for the word ‘go’. but in every generation God looked for a few who would say that they would be about their Father’s business, that they would serve the Lord , and He used them to reconcile people far away from God back to himself.