Will Mancini

In the last month, I spent time with two megachurch leaders that most readers would recognize. After extended conversation, I learned that both of these leaders had a high self-assessment on their organizational clarity and vision. But my assessment was different.

For example, one church, known for its innovation and cutting edge communication, couldn’t answer the simple Vision Frame questions of “How do you accomplish the mission ?” (strategy)  or “What kind of disciple is our church designed to produce?” (life-marks).  If these are unarticulated, then there is some clarity work to be done.

 Why the gap between the leaders self-assessment and my own?

 My best guess is that they mistake momentum and vision. It’s actually quite common among growing churches. The underlying assumption of the senior leader is that growth must be caused by a strong vision. In reality, momentum can be driven by things unrelated to vision, like personality, extreme spiritual gifts, impressive facilities, growth in the surrounding community or a failed church down the street.  

How else could you describe this momentum-vision deception? Imagine zooming down the road in your convertible even though you don’t have a clear destination or a good map. It’s easy to feel good driving fast; the euphoria of acceleration and speed alone can satisfy.   If someone is sitting in the passenger seat and asks a question about destination, the driver’s unspoken thoughts would be “Look at how fast we are going!  Quit bothering me about a map and feel the speed. Do you really think we could be driving this fast without knowing where we are going?”

 If you are experiencing momentum in your church right now, fantastic! How might this blessing be blocking the need to do some clarity work?

In Chapter 10 I share a story of a Church’s discovery process of the Kingdom Concept. In addition, I cover common troubleshooting questions for the journey.  Thanks for continuing to join the #cuvlog series. Don’t forget to tweet about it. If you use #cuvlog in your tweet, you might win a vision deck. I gave away three vision decks last week. 

We have almost completed Part 2 of Church Unique. But before we do, I introduce a powerful tool used to help church leaders do a deep dive into their local calling and passion as a church. Think about it for a minute. If we are really listening to God and leading from a missional, incarnational perspective, uniqueness won’t be something se strive for, it will be something that happens automatically. Have you really been set free from an “all things to all people” mindset? If you were to honestly look at your church, whose model of ministry are you really running?

I can’t tell you how many times I have worked with young pastor, who largely disregarded the history of a church during a visioning process. Well vision, of course, is about the future. But how crazy is it not to learn from past before running into tomorrow? I included this chapter, to remind leaders how essential and beneficial it is to look back at the vision legacies that precede us. 

If you are tracking with the Church Unique Vlog Series (#cuvlog) we are in Part 2, at chapter 8. We are almost halfway through the book.

I just finished a keynote for the NACBA (National Association of Church Business Administrators). I have never been to the conference and found they do a first class job for church leaders in the niche of business administration. (I highly recommend it.) They invited me due to the response to Church Unique. 

I spoke on the new rules of vision. Do rules change? You bet.

• When I was in college the basic model of how to understand the atom shifted from the “orbital” Bohr model to a “cloud” model based on quantum physics. 
• A few days ago I visited Graceland, home of Elvis Presley. Elvis became an international icon within a decade because he changed the rules with the way he sang and moved. 
• Last fall the NCAA added three new rules,  including banning wedge blocking during kick-offs. 

Here are six of  of the “new rules” that I spoke on today. They are part of a larger list from which I nuance content depending on the audience.  

• Vision is always discovered never created: Jesus is the original visionary for the church, and is still the master and commander of local churches today. Businesses may create vision, but church leaders must discern what God is doing and partner with him. 
• If your vision isn’t stunningly unique you probably don’t have one: If you have discovered God’s call it will be unique, because God does not mass produce His church. If you say you exist to glorify God and make disciples, you have not communicated a vision yet. 
• Vision transfers through people not paper: There are many counterfeits to real vision today that cage the idea of vision as a “paper” deliverable.  We must bring vision to life. We don’t need a strategic plan as much as we need a strategic thinking framework (that I call the Vision Frame). 
• Live it and they will come: Building a bigger box is the default mode of vision in most local churches. It is entirely inadequate and we must change the game by changing the scorecard. Are we trying to be the best church in the community or for the community? 
• Vision dripping is more important than vision casting: Great churches produce visionary teams, and visionary people that share (drip) the vision in the course of daily leadership and life. Vision ought to be a team sport and engage an army of everyday story-tellers in the community. Vision should never be relegated to special gifting of a the point leader only.