Will Mancini

As a vision guy, I get asked lots of questions about long-term this and short-term that. Here is the thinking that I believe you can really hang your hat on as a leader: Engage five horizons but spend most of your time with three.

To understand the basic three, you will want to think like a landscape oil painter. Every landscape painting contains three planes that create the visual interest and ultimately the beauty of the painting. Painters call these, foreground, middleground and background. Here is a drawing that shows how the “picture plane” works to create depth. All that painters are doing is capturing how we  see reality all of the time. While you eyes are open your brain is processing visually, “the here, the near and the far.”

The three basic horizons of leadership are the same three planes for your organization’s future. Vision is the ability to paint a picture that illustrates and anticipates where God is taking your ministry, on all three planes. Now, let’s get practical with timing.

The basic three horizons are:

• Foreground – The 90-day horizon
• Middleground – The 1-year horizon
• Background – The 3-year horizon

Here is the most important consideration for each horizon with thoughts on two additional ones.

#1 The 90 Day Horizon

Leaders should  use it with an execution focus. I also refer to this as the 90-day season of success. The beauty of this horizon is that it provides enough time to make changes and shift priorities yet it’s not to far for sustained emotional engagement. In other words, there is enough time for real progress that you can really feel.   It’s also particularly useful for church planning which follows a semester flow.

#2 The 1-Year Horizon

This is the most fundamental horizon and leaders use with a visioning focus. It is the most useful viewpoint for creating a sense of alignment, enthusiasm,  and success for a group of people. God hardwired the annual cycle into creation. We plan our budgets by it and measure our lives by it. The starting point in my coaching for articulating vision is having a singular, one-year priority. Could every leader in your church respond to the question, “Where is God taking us?” with a one-year viewpoint?

#3 The 3-Year Horizon

It has been said that its easy to overestimate what you can do in one year, and underestimate what you can do in three years. Effective leaders see beyond the annual outlook and use this horizon with a planning focus.

#4 The Far-far-away Horizon

I name this horizon as such to help re-calibrate how leaders think about long-range planning. Basically, most of what was taught in strategic planning is not useful today because the speed of change has accelerated. Therefore, we can embrace the notion that planning in the 5-20 year range is more about fantasizing that planning. (See Craig Groeshel’s little post entitled, Death of the Five-year Plan.) Nevertheless, the far-far-away horizon may impact decisions related to life-stage decisions, major directional shifts or planning related to facilities and land.  Leaders should not presume on this horizon or disregard it completely.

#5 The Infinite Horizon

 This dimension should be used for vision-casting on a very high level. Some cultures have phrases, metaphors and stories  that transcend and unify time. In Church Unique, I make fun of the overuse of what I call the “lofty one-liner” as the total model for a vision statement. But used correctly, a beautiful and ideal phrase may be a permanent part of the organization’s vision vocabulary. For example, I met with a pastor today, who uses the dominant metaphor of “every thirst quenched” when describing the vision of his church. By itself, it doesn’t do much as vision. But placed on the infinite horizon, it can capture culture and create movement as long as it is tied to inspiring, achievable milestones in shorter term horizons.

This is the season of “Vision Sunday” or “Vision Night” or other events dedicated to church priorities for the upcoming year.

As I watch the landscape of vision casting in the North America church, the most important tip is the 11/16 principle. What exactly is it?

For the last 10 years I have played over and over again Martin Luther King’s famous, “I Have a Dream” speech for church leaders. It is the best vision casting moment I know of, as an American shared experience for the 20th century.

So here’s the principle: In MLK’s famous speech, which lasts 16 minutes, he doesn’t get to “I Have a Dream” until the 11th minute. What that means is that he spends 11 minutes on ‘burning platform” before he talks about “golden tomorrow.” He spends more time telling us what’s wrong with “here,” before he tells us about going “there.”

This highlights the single most important principle of vision casting:

People could care less about your vision until they are emotionally connected to the prior problem.

Vision at the end of the day, is only a solution to a prior problem. And if I don’t feel the problem, I don’t get the vision. Your problem as a pastor is that you think I feel the problem. Well I don’t. So pleeeaassseeee remind me.  The world, my flesh and Satan have worked very hard to shield me from the real spiritual problems around me and inside of me. 

Give me 11 minutes of problem and see how much 5 minutes of solution really goes. That’s the 11/16 principle.

• What about your vision night to come?
• What about the vision night you just had?

Try 11/16 and let me know how it worked for you.

If you would like the most condensed and enjoyable learning experience on understanding the missional church (a repost from my prior blog), then take 15 minutes and watch these 6 videos from:

• Ed Stetzer
• Mark Driscoll
• Michael Frost
• Tim Keller
• Rich Kannwischer (PGF, St Andrews Pres)

If you want to learn more,  here is a video and other stuff from one of my favorite missional thinkers Alan Hirsch.

It’s such a joy to receive daily correspondence from pastors and church teams taking vision seriously in the name of Jesus. Often questions come about the “vision statement.” The primary reason for the question is that the process, as outlined in Church Unique, is not fully appreciated as a new paradigm. Teams engage the process but don’t fully reboot the hard drive when it comes to vision. Here is an e-mail I received today, followed by response.

We decided to follow the book Church Unique and used a denominational coach trained by your organization. We have gone through a the process of articulating the Vision Frame. Now we are talking about vision inside the frame, what you refer to as “vision proper” I would dearly love to see some examples of vision statements to get a better handle on the shape and feel. Is that possible? Thank you very much!

Without sounding upset, I must say that the point of my book is that you don’t need a vision statement, but a visionary state of mind. You don’t need a strategic plan, but a strategic thinking point of view. But the problem is clear: we are addicted to the statement itself.  Although the new paradigm is completely discussed in Church Unique, the addiction is strong. 

Try these 12 steps for recovery. 

#1  Admit that as soon as you make vision a statement, you render it powerless.

#2  Believe that a redefinition of vision, under the Lord Jesus as your Chief Visionary, will restore your leadership; decide to turn your leadership of His church completely over to Jesus.

#3  Commit to develop a visionary state of mind not a vision statement; realize that a visionary state of mind allows God to be God and allows others to speak into the process.

#4  Pursue a visionary state of mind by developing a framework (Vision Frame) of thinking first,  that you CAN and SHOULD  state.

#5  Before developing your framework, do a searching and fearless inventory of where God has placed you, your congregation’s capabilities and your leadership’s deepest passion. (I call this the your Kingdom Concept.)

#6  Start your framework by restating the timeless mission of Jesus for your time and place; decide that this will be THE organizing principle of everything you do. Otherwise, disband and close the church.

#7  Then state the four most important driving motives and core convictions that will shape the culture of your church as you pursue Jesus’ mission. (Congrats you have completed to sides of your Vision Frame.)

#8  Based on you searching inventory and the first two sides of your frame, state what kind of disciple your church is designed to produce; these may be called measures, life-marks, practices or something similar.

#9  Finally determine and state your church strategy as the “the how” of the mission using a picture. Note: You will never have a visionary state of mind or a visionary church until the congregation enthusiastically embraces this picture along with the other sides of your Vision Frame.  

#10  Now that you have a Vision Frame, you can start thinking, praying, discerning, dialoguing and dreaming about your vision as God’s better future God. Use the sides of your Vision Frame to serve as a guide. Decide on the single most important thing the church must do in the next 12 months. This priority is called vision proper.

#11  Ruthlessly avoid the temptation to write vision proper as a statement. Do gather 6-12 key leaders and ask them to contribute “living language” in the form of phrases, metaphors, stories, and “what if” dream nuggets based on your single 12-month priority. Use this tool as a team and revisit it quarterly.

#12  With your priority in mind create talking points for every kind of daily interaction (prayer, one-on-ones, recruitment, teams, preaching, etc.) Use this spider diagram to practice painting a picture with words. Cast your vision as much as possible by dripping vision into daily conversations. Encourage the team to do the same. Don’t print your talking points. Remember that vision transfers through people not paper.

In the end, a visionary leader is not someone with a vision statement in their hand, but a compelling picture of God’s better future, streaming from their lips and entering peoples hearts all the time. May God bless your recovery process.

That’s an amazing claim from Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village Church. In this video, Matt explains one of the early “shaping influences” of his life being Larry Osborn’s book Sticky Teams. (Originally entitled The Unity Factor.) 

Would you like to have that kind of team effectiveness? Of course you would. Then come out and join me along with

• Wayne Cordeiro
• Larry Osborne (1 min. video about Sticky Teams)
• Jamie Munson, Mars Hill Lead Pastor (yes that’s Mark Driscoll’s church) 

at North Coast Church’s Sticky Teams Conference. This is focused content, in a great location, from accessible leaders at a great price. 

• READ MORE on WHY YOU should attend

• SIGN UP HERE

• Come to my PRE-CONFERENCE workshop and COMMENT on this blog and I will bring you a FREE Collaboration Cube, the single best team-building tool, I have ever seen.