Will Mancini

The only thing better than digesting Andy Stanely’s book, Communicating for a Change is hearing a communicator apply it! Bruce Wesley, Yancey Arrington and Greg Poore are my teaching pastors at Clear Creek Community Church, and they really hit it out of the park. Over the last two years, the teaching team has zeroed in on a less is more communication strategy that leaves the message resonating in the heart throughout the week. The key feature of the message delivery is a “sticky” central idea around which the entire message is built. This last Sunday Yancey continued his Suburban Legends series, and spoke on the Myth of “New is Better.” Yancey brought a great blend of humor and urgency as he uncovered our tendency to tinker with the real Jesus to brew a more appealing spirituality. Reasserting a clear gospel, he ramped up the central idea that “to mess with the truth is to miss the truth.”

On the airplane from Spartanburg, SC to Dallas, TX to speak at Leadership Network, I was reflecting on the nature of vision. Although we know vision is important we tend to think of vision as intangible and in the future and therefore as not real. Well that seems simple, right? Maybe not. Unfortunately vision for most is words on paper- statement- rather than a vital, pulsating reality in the heart of the leadership community. Is it possible that vision could be and should be more real? Should it be as real, perhaps more real, than the physical objects around us everyday? I am still thinking about this, but my thinking left two questions to ponder:

Is what God has imagined any less real than our current reality?

Is your imagination what God has already imagined?

Last night Upward Sports kicked off its 2008 training tour in San Antonio with its typical “service beyond expectation” style. On Friday night, Caz McCaslin, the founder and president retells the creation story with humor and passion, urging church partners “to race to the heart of the child” cause “the first one there wins!” Upward is introducing somewhat of a paradigm shift this year to take their mission deeper in cities across the world, “to introduce children to Jesus Christ by creating opportunity to serve through sports.” The paradigm shift is the cultivation of a stronger missional heartbeat in the churches that run the sports programs. Caz says, “Upward is not a program for your church, its a program for your community!” The picture of this kingdom perspective is painted by their vision proper- the memorable numbers “4-1-1.” Over the last twelve years Upward marked the moments that there programs reached four thousand kids, then forty thousand kids, then four hundred thousand. The vision is now is 4-1-1. Reaching four million kids with one million leaders that lead to “won hearts” for Christ.

After completing a 12-month journey with Auxano, the pastoral staff of the MET, lead by Sal Sberna unveiled their Vision Frame to over 500 people in their leadership community last Sunday. On exciting aspect of The MET’s vision is a 100-acre plot of land in the middle of one of the largest master planned community in the country- Bridgeland in Northwest Houston. The spearhead of their vision is their missional mandate to “connect people each day to the real Jesus in a real way.” They articulate 5 values or missional motives that guide their uncommon community:

Because we are the recipients of Undeserved Grace we value:
• Unexpected Authenticity
• Unselfish Service
• Undiluted Truth
• Undivided Living
• Unapologetic Evangelism

Last Sunday, Faithbridge had their first Values Blitz of the year. Three “blitzes” a year make up the backbone of our leadership development process. Basically the Values Blitz is an unforgettable shared experience around one of Faithbridge’s six core values. By having three a year, every leader gets total exposure to all six values every two years.

The idea behind the shared experience is rooted in the model of Jesus. He seemed to focus on identity much more than activity. Likewise our goal was “be more” together and not just to talk about our “doing.” Jesus also would immerse his followers into symbolic experiences that would find meaning after the fact.

During this blitz on fervent prayer, we emphasized the dynamic of listening to God. The total experience together was designed with 25 minutes of teaching and celebration and 25 minutes of unexpected silence. For the silent part we used Rob Bell’s Nooma video, Noise, which kicked off a powerful 8 minutes. Following this we asked leaders to respond to “What is God saying to you right now?” by writing on large listening wall. The whole 25 minutes was held in a very dynamic silence. God was in it and four days later, many leaders have not stopped talking about the unique time together. As leaders left, all had a dot sticker on their cell phone with the number 10, symbolizing a commitment to listen to God in silence for 10 minutes a day for the next week.