Will Mancini

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.

In this vlog post I cover Chapter 2 of Church Unique, entitled The Fall of Strategic Planning. This is a sensitive subject because many consider me a strategic planning guy. I would say that I am and I am not. I am a strategic thinker  that presents a simpler method for planning.  Think strategic planning 2.0.  In this chapter I present the typical output of a strategic plan and three fallacies (see the table below) of the classic approach. Later in Church Unique I present the simpler planning method. By the way, I am shocked at how little has been written on this particular subject and how many churches insist on plodding along with dated, cumbersome methods.

This is the first post to announce a tool that I have been working on with Group Publishing, called the Church Unique Vision Kit. The Kit is designed for church planters and churches under 400 in worship attendance who want a guided process and great tools for visioning but who don’t need to bring in a consultant.

Imagine for a moment that you are asked to take the best of your life calling and passion and to distill it, not just into a book, but into tools, workbooks, and videos so that a team can accomplish a massive objective without you there.

On a side note, it took me a while to get to the point of wanting to work on this project. It’s easy from a distance to see a project like this as a “watered-down-consultant-in-a-box.” I have been guilty of perceiving other projects this way. Now I see that as my own pride of competency. I am amazed at how many “thank-yous” I get from book readers almost daily.  I am thrilled that I have been asked to bring more tools to leaders whom I will never meet face to face. I am more excited about this project than any others I have worked on.

One step of the process is defining more precisely the functions that a great vision team must perform. Over the last decade I am intuitively stepping in and out of these roles as needed when I am onsite. The explicit identification of these roles is critical, in order to be distributed across the players on the team. Here is sneak preview of the nine roles of a great vision team.

Here is a brief description for each role:

• The Coach – influences the team and assures that each person understands the process in order to affect participation, ownership and effective decision-making.
• The Maven – monitors progress and assures that definitions are accurate and that decisions and achievements are not made without compromising the quality of the result or a good understanding of the result from team members.
• The Conductor – leads the team, communicates standards, keeps progress and decision-making moving forward.
• The Encourager – promotes team unity by instilling confidence in each member and support for the team progress. The encourager should be a vocal cheerleader both to individuals and to the team.
• The Journalist – reports Vision Pathway progress to the leadership or congregation of the church.
• The Host –prepares logistics, supplies, room set up, so the meetings are environments that enhance collaboration and team strengthening
• The Gatekeeper – listens to what the congregation is saying about the process and provides feedback to the team throughout the process.
• The Scribe – records and details progress and decisions made in each session to provide official records that can be used as reference.. The journalist is thinking about publicity and the congregation, the scribe is thinking about accuracy and internal team decision-making
• The Planner – assigns responsibilities, follow up, homework and preparation for the next session. The planner works closely with and serves as the “2nd chair” to the conductor.

Many thanks to the vision and collaborative leadership of Dave Thornton at Group and the vision and support of Tom and Joanie Schultz. They have been great partners in this venture! Yes, incredible things will happen.

When discerning vision and sharpening clarity, pastors are faced with an interesting dilemma between trust and objectivity.  Trust and objectivity are inversely related. When the leader is new to the organization, he or she will have maximum objectivity, but little trust. As trust is earned over the first several years, the vantage point of objectivity diminishes until it is gone forever.

Every effective leader at some point, and in some area will need to make critical decisions for the ministry that will carry long-term implications.  Don’t let your bank account of trust keep you from benefiting from the objectivity of a strategic outsider.