Video Transcript: Lesson 29 Vision

Welcome back lecture 29. Christian leaders Institute as we get into church  revitalization, we've just finished talking about mission and understanding the  purpose of the church. And in this lecture, we're going to be talking about vision.  And these words are often used. Together, they're often I think, confused. And  and I'm hoping today, in this lecture to help you understand the difference  between them. Just as we talked about the value of knowing the mission of the  church, I'd love to be able to communicate with you the importance of you  having a vision for the ministry, that you're leading where God has put you. So  let's pray about this. We always need the Lord's hand leading and guiding us  and in this lecture, it's certainly no different. Let's pray. Lord, You're a wonderful  Lord. You are faithful to the end, Lord we know that you are sovereign, and that  you have a plan for all things you exist outside of time. And so Lord, as we talk  about vision, and moving into the future, God, we know that you're already  there. So I pray for everyone watching, Lord that they might have the the eyes  and ears and the heart to see Lord what their, what your vision for them is, and  the ministries they lead. And God speak to them in a way that just creates  excitement and passion and gets them so excited about all the possibilities of  what can be done in and through your name. Amen. Okay, so let's start by just  distinguishing the difference between mission and vision. Okay. So mission asks the question, what, what should the church be about? What is the church called  to do? Again, this is capital C Church, the universal church, and we talked about that, right? What does the church do? Well, it continues the ministry of Jesus. It  is a ministry of worship. It's a ministry of evangelism and gospel sharing. It's a  ministry of discipleship. It's a ministry of serving, and it's a ministry of covenantal loving relationships. That's the what? What is the church supposed to do? Okay, so we spent quite a bit of time last lecture digging into that. Vision asks, how,  how are we going to do that? Okay. How are we going to do that? Right here,  like in your place, wherever you're at whatever city whatever country, whatever,  ministry, whatever church whatever size it is, whatever context you're in, how  are you going to do it there? Specifically, so unlike mission, which is universal,  because you me, I don't care who it is, in 500 years from now, the mission of the church, or it's going to be the same thing, right? Vision is not universal vision is  this. It's an original and unique expression of the mission of the church,  dependent upon its location and generation. So let me break this down for you.  So it's original, and unique. So this is something that God is very specially  calling you to do. Right? Right, where you're at, right at this time, this is what  God has for you. And it's very dependent upon where you are the needs of your  community, what's going on at this time in history, right? So it's an expression of  the mission, it's saying, how we are going to get done, the ministry of Jesus in  our time and in our place. How are we going to do that we know what we're  supposed to do. That's the last lecture, we know what we're supposed to do. But now we're gonna talk about how we're supposed to do it. Okay. And so, again, 

just touching on, I feel like we just, I've said it, like a million times in these  lectures, but I feel like I'm gonna say it a million and one. It's so dependent on  location and generation. So when we talk about vision, right? What God is  calling you to do is always going to be the same. How God is calling you to do  that is always going to be different. It's going to be unique. So if you're a church  in urban Chicago, it's going to look different than if you're a church in the  countryside in England. If you're in a very affluent, rich area, If it's going to look  probably very different than another city where there's homelessness and a lack  of food or a place where they don't have clean water, it's what God is calling you to do how to live out the mission, it's going to be different. So for the million and  first time, there is no silver bullet here, there's no magic solution, there's no one  size fits all, it's going to have to be through the Lord's assistance, figuring out  this original and unique expression. Okay, of fulfilling the mission. So we're  gonna talk more about that in a minute. But before that, what why does vision  matter? Why is it important to be thinking about? Kind of the future? And when  we talk about vision, right, we're talking about looking ahead. Seeing ahead, it's, it's painting a picture of where where would we be in five years? Right? It's, it's  forward thinking, it's an exercise in dreaming, right? It's envisioning, right? It  doesn't exist yet. But it's, it kind of like exists in your mind. So why why is this  process so important? And thinking about what could be right? What's so  important about it? Well, it really gets us beyond maintenance mentality. I think  churches that are struggling churches that are in decline, I don't know, it could  be 100%. Like, there's just a maintenance mentality of just keeping things going. And we don't look ever any farther than maybe the next year when we talk about our budget, but, but like, That's it, and it's like, well, we're all kind of just keep  doing what we're doing. But there isn't any sense of like, down the road, and oh, my goodness, you know, let's dream about in five years, three years, 10 years,  50 years, what God could do in through this place, and how it could change the  community that we're in how God can, the kingdom of God can break in. So it  gets us beyond just thinking, well, we're going to repeat all the programs we  have this year, next year, we're going to spend, you know, the same money we  did last year, this year, we only need the same number of leaders next year that  we needed this year. Because when you're in maintenance mentality, it's always  going to as things go away, you're always going to be kind of a shrinking.  Dynamic, it's always going to be getting less and less and less and less. Right  vision kind of thinks about kind of like increasing, it makes you kind of go in a  different direction. Right. And, and this is such a wonderful gift that we have as  humans this ability, this ability to think about the future, to get excited about it,  you know, to look forward to dream, this is part of what it is to be made in the  image of God is to envision a future right? You know, I have I have a wonderful  dog. And she's five years old, you know, but she never thinks about like what  she's going to be doing next Thursday, right? Like, I really hope that I get to go 

to the park next Thursday, or, you know, next Saturday, it'd be great if I could  have a bath, you know, my dog never thinks about that my dog is just kind of in  the moment, lives for the moment. There's no long range planning, there's no  thinking ahead. And that's something that separates us from from animals, right.  I mean, that were made in the image of God, and God sees the future. God's in  the future. And we can we are like that. And so vision, as we think about the  future, we think about what could be it really fuels revitalization. It gets us  excited. We're not just stuck. What's going on now? And what are all the  problems? And what are all the difficulties and what are all the obstacles we're  gonna have to overcome? It gets us thinking about success and, and victory and progress and, you know, excitement, so it really fuels revitalization. It gets our  juices going, right. We've talked about this a little bit, it makes us think, what if,  you know, what if, you know what if 10 years from now, this whole room were  filled with people who, right now don't believe in Jesus Christ? What if we could  feed, you know, 500 children a week? Who are going hungry? What it you know, just all those kinds of things? What if we could do this? You know, what if we  could raise up the next generation of we could do something and invest in young people and, and in the next generation, we could send 10 people into full time  Christian ministry. What if we could do that? You know? What if we could not  just, you know, become healthy ourselves. But what if out of this, we could plant  another church? You know, again, it gets us thinking like, you know, what if,  again, it gets us beyond the problems of the day. And I think another important  thing is with vision, thinking about the future, it justifies changes and hard  decisions, right? It gives us the kind of the freedom to say, We're doing this  because because we have this great idea in mind. not just an idea. But we've  got a vision that we think God is leading us towards. And that's why we're doing  this. So I think about when my family, when we decide to take a big family  vacation, and we're going somewhere, so for us, you know, we have to start  saving money, we have to change our schedule. And then in order to save  money, we have to say no to things that we would like to do during the year. So  maybe we can't go out to eat when we would like to because we need to save  money for our trip. And we have to spend some of our free time making  reservations and planning and coordinating and doing all kinds of things. So you know, the run up to a big family vacation, you know, can be quite a bit of work.  And it costs a lot of money that can be used on other things. So, but here's the  thing, I never, it doesn't really seem hard to say no to something when I know,  I'm saying no to this. But in six months from now, our family is going to be on  this dream vacation. So I can go without this. Now I can go without a new pair of shoes, or I can go without going out to dinner. Because I know, there's I know  where where I'm going to be in six months. And that that is just so exciting. And  that beats anything, right? But, but if I had nothing to look forward to, if there  was nothing I was working towards, there would be no point I guess, in in 

making kind of hard decisions. And so, so this idea is that when you have  something out there in front of you that you're working towards, that you've got a vision for. It really helps you make hard decisions now, right? I'll give you  another example. i Right now I have two of my kids are in high school, and one  of them is going into his last year of high school and he's getting ready to go.  He's thinking about colleges and all this kind of stuff. And so we have a lot of  conversations about him studying hard and putting in extra work and challenging himself and all this stuff. Well, why is that? Because it's not just about the  classes. And now it's about well, he wants to get into a good school. And he  wants to get into good school because he'd like to have a career one day and,  and enjoy his occupation and to be able to provide for his family, and to have a  good life and to be able to have money and resources to bless others and all  those kind of things. So he's, he's willing now to put in the extra work and the  extra effort, not just because like he wants to do it. Now. In fact, he doesn't want  to do it now for the most part. But he does it anyway. Because we're teaching  him like, Where will why this will matter in five years and 10 years and in 20  years, the kind of, you know the kind of life you'd like to have. It requires that  sort of sacrifice now. So when we think about churches, and we think about  churches going through revitalization, and making hard decisions and saying no  to something, saying yes to some things and pushing ourselves and stretching  ourselves. If we have a clear vision of what we want to do what we want to be, it really helps, again, justify why we're doing the things we're doing, right? We  want to be a church that's all about this. So that's why we make these decisions. We want to be a church that, you know, has a really robust children's ministry.  I'm just making this up. So what we're going to do is, we're going to need to  bring on extra staff in order to do that. So we're going to increase the budget  now for that. We're going to work on redoing a children's ministry area. We're  going to try to get into the school system to establish connections and some  tutoring and after school things we're going to, you know, all these kinds of  things. Okay, so this is going to take time it's going to take money, it's going to  take a lot of effort it's going to take a lot of training but why are we doing all this? Because we imagine that down the road, children who are, who have no place  to go after school are being loved. They're being fed, they're succeeding in  school, they're being introduced to Jesus, we're going to capture that  generation, and they're going to grow up knowing the Lord, they're going to grow up being happy, healthy, productive citizens, and raising of good families. That's, you know, that's the vision. That's what we're going to see. So we have to do  this now. Okay, you get the idea, this whole idea about vision, how it moves us  beyond the current status quo, and makes us think differently. Let's ask a really  important question, though, is this idea of vision biblical? Because when we talk  about mission and vision, there's sometimes pushback and says, you know, this  is just corporate lingo and language, and why are, is the church talking about 

things like mission? And vision? These are like more business terms. So is that  a fair argument? Is is vision biblical? Getting people to think about the future?  Well, I would say it's incredibly difficult. And I would say it's biblical before it's  business, that the business world has just kind of hijacked something that has  always been part of the life of the church. So what about think about the call of  Abram, right? God comes to him, and he goes, you know, leave your family and  go to a land that I will show you, right? He doesn't know where he's going. And,  and he just goes, and, and God says, and look at the stars of the sky, you know,  that's how many your descendants will be, you know, the grains of sand here in  the desert, your, your descendants will out, out number that. And Abram when  he becomes Abraham, and he finally he's in the Promised Land, and God says,  and one day, all of this land will be your descendants, right? So why does  Abraham leave us home? Why does Abraham do all the things he does? Is  because God gave him a vision of what could be. And so he was willing to make all the sacrifices he's willing to endure, whatever it is that God asked him to do,  in order to be a part of God's great purpose, right? So God gives Abraham a  vision. That's what gets him going. Okay? We see this also with Moses, right?  So at the burning bush, when God first appears to Moses, he says, Moses, I  want you to go back, I want you to release, be the leader release my people  from Egypt, I want you to confront Pharaoh, and then you will come back here  and you will worship Me with them. Right? And, and you will lead them into the  Promised Land. You know, it's a land flowing with milk and honey, right? So  there's this vision of Moses, I want you to do this, because this is where you're  going. This is this is the plan. This is the purpose. So again, Moses deals with  incredible amounts of hardships and difficulty and just the craziness of the  Israelites in their disobedience, right? Why? Because he's got this vision, and  that just keeps driving him what God has called him to do. We could think of the  disciples, Jesus gives them a vision, I will make you fishers of men, right? You  will, I'm going to send you out into the world you're not just going to fish for, for  fish for fish, you're going to fish for people and then again, sending them out,  you know, you're gonna go to all corners of the world. The world will know, know me through you. I mean, think of these, these two disciples who are gathered  when they received the Great Commission, and it was you're gonna go to the  end of the world, like these guys hadn't been anywhere in their life, right? I  mean, they just followed, they lived in a little fishing village, and then they follow  Jesus around. But honestly, the, the, that area was actually quite small. And  they're saying, you're gonna go to the ends of the world, to preach the gospel,  what a vision he, Jesus laid out for them, and certainly. I think the grandest  vision of all is what is in Revelation. It's also in Isaiah, that the new heaven and  a new earth that God has given us a vision of where it is all going towards that  he is going to return until the kingdom of God will descend in fullness and He will be with his people and there'll be no more crying or pain or sin or, you know, 

eternal glory. Like that's the vision that God is leading the world towards, and he  shared it with us. So is vision biblical? Absolutely. I mean, isn't that what all  prophetic prophecy is all the you know, these prophetic announcements that  God is going to do this, he's always giving people a vision of what he is going to  do. So let's talk about vision. And how do you discover what your vision is?  What is the unique, original thing that God is calling you to do? Right? Because I mean, God, Noah built an ark, you know, Moses led the people out of the  wilderness, David was a king, the disciples preached the gospel, it was always,  you know, kind of very different, you know, when God calls people, it's not just  do that, do the same thing as everybody else. It's often very unique. So let's talk  about this. So first of all, it requires prayerful discernment, your your, your vision  of what God of what you should do. It's original in the sense that you're not just  copying the guy down the street. But it's not original in the sense that it's, you're  making it up. It's original in the sense that it's, God created it. And you're just  discerning what it is. But it's unique to you. So in that sense, it's original. It's not  just, this is what everybody else is doing. We're going to do this as well. So how  are we uniquely situated? Right? What's, what's different about where you're at? I mean, are you in an urban setting? Are you in a rural setting? Is your church or your ministry? Is it three years old? Is it 200 years old? You know, what's going  on? In your community? Do you? Did you just go through a natural disaster? I  mean, do you have grade schools? Is it an aging community? Are there a ton of  young families? You know, you think about, you know, a town where maybe a  new business just moved in, you know, Amazon, or Google is building  headquarters down the road from you. And there's going to be a massive influx  of people. Or maybe there's like refugees or immigrants moving into your  neighborhood or your community. Or maybe the company in town shut down.  And it's, you know, it's a very hard and difficult place. So you got to consider all  these things, where are we uniquely situated? And then what are the needs?  Like what are the present needs of the community around us? You know, so just taking time, like looking around asking people just looking with the eyes of the  Lord, if Jesus was walking through your town, what would he see? Where would he go? What would what are the needs that he would address? Okay. And that's just prayerful discernment. How are we uniquely situated? Because you're  different than everybody else. So my church, we're in a small town on the  shores of Lake Michigan, we're in the middle of downtown and our church is 170 years old. And it's a big brick stained glass building. And so our building is very  formal. It's very traditional. And we are in the middle of a business district and on one side, and the other side is all vacation rental homes. For people who come  to the beach in the summer where we live. That's kind of where we're at. All  right. We also live in a church and a town where there's churches on a lot of  corners, okay. You might be in an area where you're the only church within 30  miles, you know, so we're all very uniquely situated. Okay? Figuring that out. 

Second, what gifts, abilities passions, do we have like your church? Like?  What's the unique makeup? What are the people good at? What are their  spiritual gifts? What drives them? What gets them excited? Think about things in the past. What's something that's going on in the community that people are  really kind of, you know, getting jazzed about and how can you contribute to that or is there a need that's going on that's breaking the hearts of people. I  remember in a church I previously served when I was an associate in the county we were in had one of the highest rates of alcoholism in the entire United  States. So that was kind of a unique situation, we were in just tremendous  substance abuse. And there were some people in our church who really had a  passion to try to reach out to that. And they, some of them had that experience,  they were coming out of that. Some others had family and friends who had gone through that. And so they just really had this passion for it. And they really  wanted to connect. And so there was this kind of wonderful kind of coming  together of what we wanted to do, and where our heart was, and what the  community needed. And so we had this ministry that was really based on this  idea that the only true recovery comes through Jesus Christ. And it really set the church apart. And it had a very, very vibrant ministry in our, our vision was this  idea of a lot of people coming out of substance abuse into, you know, free, free  from that, and living, you know, victorious and glorious lives for Jesus Christ and transforming families transforming the next generation. So they would break this cycle of bondage. I mean, that was a big vision. And it was just really exciting to  see how God just worked through that and did just so many wonderful and  amazing things. So you want to think about what gifts passions abilities that you  have, again, what gets your people going. There's another example the story of  a town in I think it's called Possum Trot, Texas, if I recall, well, in Possum Trot,  this church became just really had a vision for children without families. And the  number of this little church, the number of adoptions and fostering that  happened in this church was like astronomical, it was like they had more  children who were being fostered and adopted than they even had people in the  church. And it was just, that was their passion. They just saw children in either in their community or in the world, and just, we want to be Christ, we want to  welcome those who have not anyone around them who are alone and  orphaned. And they embraced that. And so again, gifts, abilities, passions,  unique situations. And then I think another kind of important question for us to  think about is where has the Lord been leading? Where has the Lord been  showing up in our life? Okay, where is the Lord been leading? Where has he  been kind of pushing and showing up? So that's really kind of a big piece of this. Because if anybody's familiar with Henry Blackaby's book in the study of  Experiencing God, that's really what Blackaby talks about is, if you want to do  something great, don't just come up with an idea and do something. The whole  premise of Experiencing God is look for God, where is he at work? Where is he 

moving? And then join him in that like, that's, you know, that's just a natural way  to go about it. So just prayerfully discerning. How are we situated? What abilities do we have? And where do we see God at work? Okay, where's he going  already? I mean, again, there's just a million things you could you can do with  that. Whether, we're going to adopt a neighborhood, we're going to, we're going  to present the gospel to every home in our zip code. We're going to make sure  every child in our community has a Bible. We're going to make sure we're gonna have everyone in our congregation read through the Bible, and be the most  Biblically literate church, you know, in this state, I don't know. But, you know,  we're gonna grow in such a way that we do this. We're gonna raise a million  dollar for for for missions, so that this one country can experience the gospel.  Just I mean, it's endless. There's endless things, but again, it's always thinking  about the future and what we can do. Right. So the process that we went  through was a bunch of us we went through just just praying daily about God,  what would you have us and we, we had index cards, and we would write down  what we thought where God was leading us and where we needed to revitalize  and what it could look like and about the community. And we did that for about a  month. And then we got our index cards together and our coach who we had at  the time, I don't know, we had like, like 1000 or something. And then he sorted  them all out kind of in the categories. And it was like, This is what is your the  people of our church were hearing, kind of our leadership team, here's what we  were hearing. And it was interesting how many similarities kind of we had, and  we heard, and we saw that God was leading us in the same direction. So that  that can be a really, really good exercise. Maybe for you. It's just that people  daily, just take the time to discern, Okay, God, what would you have for us?  God, I'm just my not my agenda, but yours. And do that, and then kind of sort  them out and see, like, what is God's saying to us? I also had done as we were  discerning some things. I also wrote out, it ended up being about 20 pages a  document, it was a vision document. And it was kind of a what if or an imagine  this, and I put the church out seven years from the time when I wrote it, and I  said, and I wrote just about how, how all the things like had gone well, and  worship and how that had changed. And in the youth ministry and in small  groups, and discipling, and our mission team and with our facility and, and I  gave the it was like the speech I gave at a big banquet celebrating God and all  the good things he had done. And it was so exciting. Like, as I started writing it,  like I couldn't wait, I was just typing and typing. And I couldn't wait to share it  with other people and get them thinking about it. So maybe doing something like that, I condensed it down to like a two page version and bullet pointed. And we  shared that with a number of people. But again, it got the juices flowing. And  people were thinking, wow, wow, like, I wonder if we, I wonder if that could be.  Now I'll say this. When I wrote that seven, it was seven years in the future, we're now at six years. There's a lot of things on that vision document I wrote, that did 

not happen. Not even close. But I'll tell you what, there are a number of things  that did. And that's really exciting. And there's some things that have happened  that I didn't even write about, that God has showed up in really cool and  interesting ways. And so but it's so neat. I recently went back and read it. And it  was like my goodness, like look at all the things that we dreamed about that God has done like he's been faithful. It didn't always work out the way we thought.  But that's like, but he's definitely doing things. He's definitely at work. And when  we were discerning through our prayer cards and all that, like we were, we  weren't far off from what God wanted to do. So those are just a couple things  that you can do to kind of get the vision going. And thinking about what would  God have us do? If you really want to kind of go the extra mile, there's a great  book resource called God dreams, by Will Mancini, M-A-N-C-I-N-I. And it's a  whole process of how to discern a vision and how to kind of roll it out. That's an  excellent resource. But again, anything by Aubrey Malphurs, with like, advanced strategic planning, and all those kinds of things. There's a lot of resources out  there if you want to go that extra mile. But as you're doing this, I mean, you're  kind of pulling together a lot of things, right. I mean, it was talked about your  assessments, your your church history, where has God showed up in the past?  What does God like to do in in your community in your church? We're talking  about health factors, we're talking about mission, we're talking about your  unique location, all these things are kind of coming together, they're speaking  into this. So vision discerning. It's a messy process that takes a lot of things into  account. But it's worth doing. It really is worth just kind of getting into and doing  and dreaming. And honestly, of all the things you do in revitalization. It's  definitely one of the most fun, right? Because you're just smiling, you're thinking  you're dreaming, you get all excited about it and your people will too just as you  get excited about it because God has dreams for them too. And they want to  think about the future and all that. So just with that, I'm just going to wrap it up.  I'm going to pray for you. And we're going to move on to one more lecture on  structure, kind of the kind of a how do you actually start to make these things  happen in in the church like how do you how do you organize around mission  and vision and I just tell you a little bit about that and how we did it. So hopefully, that'll be a blessing to you as well. But for now, let me just pray for the vision.  God. Just as this song we often sing open the eyes of our heart, we want to see  you God. I pray that for every congregation, every ministry, every pastor, every  leader represented in this class that's watching. God would you open up their  eyes so that they might see you God and know where you are leading. God give them the courage to follow you the boldness to go Lord, where you want them to go. Lord filled them with unwavering perseverance, determination, Lord, to not  give up. But to realize the very dreams that you have for them. Lord, we love  you, we praise your name. And for the people who are who are going to be  taking on this great task of writing up visions and dreaming and sharing. God 

just give them confidence and assurance to say, I pray all this in your name,  amen.