Darryl's Blog
God and church vision statements
It's now generally accepted that if you are going to be a leader, you need vision. I generally buy this. Some of the most effective leaders I know have modeled this for me. It's a lot better than drifting.
But vision also has its dangers. Vision is especially dangerous if you're a Christian leader and you're going to invoke the name of God.
C.S. Lewis wrote to his brother during World War II:
In the litany this morning we had some extra petitions, one of which was "Prosper, O Lord, our righteous cause"... When I met [the reverend] in the porch, I ventured to protest against the audacity of informing God that our cause was righteous - a point on which He may have his own view... I hope it is quite like ours, of course: but you never know with Him.
We hope that our vision is from God, but when we inform him that our vision is righteous, or - even worse - pretend that our vision came from God, we're on dangerous ground.
In Lewis's Screwtape Letters, Screwtape advised his young nephew, a junior demon, on how to destroy his patient (a human) in a time of war:
Quietly and gradually nurse him into the stage at which religion becomes merely part of the "cause" [vision] and his [faith] is valued chiefly for the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the [vision]. … Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades mean more to him than prayer and and sacraments and charity, he is ours--and the more "religious" on those terms the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.
The more religious our vision, the more dangerous, especially if faith plays a supporting role to vision.
I've heard talk this week about having a vision worth dying for. "As a leader" it's said, "people will follow your lead. They will own the vision as much as you own it. If you're not willing to die for it, then it's not a vision worth dying for."
Maybe, but Charlene overheard someone respond, "I'd die for Jesus, but I wouldn't die for my church's vision." The problem is that we often confuse the two.
All organizations (including churches) need vision - but Lewis reminds us that God and the angels are not necessarily on the side of our vision statements. That's something every leader has to remember.
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Forgive me for leaping so suddenly out of the lurking pool but... Our own church is going through a 'visioning' process and I'm not comfortable with it. I'm not sure "seeing" or vision is the right metaphor for the Kingdom. It's a real struggle I'm having.
When God spoke the world into existence we can assume that reality 'heard' him. The ten commandments begin, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God..." John refers to Jesus as the "Word of God", spoken into the world. Paul says that "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God," while Jesus says that his sheep will hear - and know - his voice. There's a lot more I could say by way of some personal observations but this comment is already too long (my bad)
I'm becoming more and more uncomfortable with the idea that leaders must have vision. I wonder if they need to hear instead of see - hear the voice of God, hear the heart cry of their people and to engage God in that place that lies between. The strategizing and priortizing that inevitably arises out of a "vision" statment is beginning to feel more and more like something so very unlike the way the Kingdom of God operates. I'm beginning to wonder - I mean, really, not rhetorically - wonder if everything we've been taught about this is wrong.
This isn't a terribly comfortable place to be.
Thanks for this post. I get tired of hearing pastors pitch a half verse of the KJV Bible "where there is no vision, the people perish..." (Prov.29:18) to justify their subjective dream-casting.
God-given rally cries, leadership charisma, the power of influence and a visionary spirit may have their place, but none of these are intended by this proverb. Solomon has something more important to say:
"Where there is no vision, the people perish:
but he that keepeth the law, happy is he."
This is an older testament call to covet and pursue the prophetic vision, the revelation of God for the people of God. As God's mouthpiece God's Prophets would mediate what God had revealed for His covenant people.
So the application for us is that we should get back to the Bible, because this itself is our vision, our revelation and our blessing. Without the primacy of preaching, teaching, counselling, praying and sharing the "already revealed" word of God we will perish.
Much of what Trish has written resonates with me.
Let me add that as workers and communities of God's Kingdom the governing vision has been cast by God himself through the inaugurating ministry of Jesus.
Our task is to implement, in our context, what Jesus initiated. This requires dependency on God, discernment of his agenda and a collaboration among God's people.
When our leadership becomes a dependency on things other than God, a discernment of best practices and a coerced cooperation by God's people our visioning might be better called vanity.
I took a course out at ACTS in the spring, where we read a lot about strategic vision and planning for churches. I do agree with their approach to this matter - that the vision ultimately comes from Jesus' vision, or like the rest of that verse reads, "the law". A proper church mission statement is basically a restatement of Biblical calling into a church's own context. What comes from it is a church's vision, which is what that church will focus on - where its giftings lie, what they do best.
Not every church will have identical visions - one might be for reaching the homeless while another might be for reaching families. Both of these are Biblical, neither are exclusive, but they are focusing on where they themselves can do the most good for the Kingdom. It is really meant to be a process of discovering what as a body, a particular congregation is gifted to do in service to Christ.
I found it kind of funny that you mentioned "a vision worth dying for", because on Sunday we got a video clip from our pastor who is also at that same Willow Creek conference that you appear to have attended. Small world!
29:18 literally, "where there is no seer, the people perish" or translate "prophet" .. ie. someone who speaks for God (because having first seen or heard). But the OT prophetic role shifted to a "prophethood" of believers. Together as God's people we discern God's future. Len Sweet wrote,
"The definition of leadership as "vision" trips a variety of cliches. Leadership as "vision" has become another way about exercising dominance and pushing other people around your ideas. Governor Gray Davis of California--subsequently recalled--was toast the minute he said, early in his term, that the state legislature's job was to "implement my vision." Vision has become a way of declaring dominance, of achieving alpha status and stats.
"Furthermore, "vision casting" is most often nothing more than "strategic planning" board games. "Visionary" endows shopworn ideas with new roadworthiness and respectability. Even worse, when leadership development is disfigured as "the vision thing," we are teaching a dysfunctional system to leaders whose success will hinge on their ability to dismantle the very thing they've been taught." Sweet, "Summoned to Lead."