Will Mancini

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.

If you have not registered yet for Leadership Network’s free online conference, The Nines, you might want to put it on your calendar. It’s coming up in a few weeks, on September 9th. 

As a presenter, I have seen some of the content highlights and I am looking forward to hearing from all 100 leaders who will share a GAME CHANGING  moment in a 6-MINUTE highlight.

But I am really looking forward to Steve Furtick’s talk. Here are some quotes:

• We live in a culture of carbon copy.  Embrace your uniqueness!  
  
• Mediocrity is mass-produced, but destiny is custom designed. 
  
• We spend most of our life trying to stamp out our uniqueness. 
  
• What are some of the ways you’ve been trying to operate in someone else’s gifting? 

Are you surprised that this is my favorite talk?

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. 

The first time I heard the words “birth of a vision-death of a vision-birth of a vision” was in a Bill Gothard seminar as a high school student. What he described as a pattern in God’s “economy” of working with leaders, is illustrated most dramatically with Abraham’s call to sacrifice Isaac. Isaac represented the long awaited promise of a son, through whom Abraham’s family would multiply like stars in the sky and sand on the beach. But God led Abraham to the death of the that vision, quite literally, only to then re-provide for the original promise. The death of the vision tests whether or not our deepest allegiance is to the vision or to God. 

I am grateful for this perspective which has buttressed my own faith in difficult or unexpected times of testing. For example, I could not have had a clearer call to go to seminary. Yet in my first year, increasing family commitments and financial limitations stared me down. Every voice of wisdom told me to become a full-time engineer again and put seminary plans on hold. The situation got pretty bleak, and my vision faded.  I gave up my grasp on the dream of training but kept my hope in God’s call to ministry. The week before the start of my second semester, I had no money for classes, and no job. The next day, God brought a 30-hour a week job as an engineer  (with flex time around school) and unsolicited support came in from four different families to cover one year’s tuition. It was a minor miracle and the re-birth of my dream. 

The cycle works on a micro and macro-level.  Today I read a letter from a pastor who was thinking through his apostolic esprit (our term for passion) for his Kingdom Concept. He began to realized that his deepest call from God was being reborn. Years ago he had to ministry of creating safe environments for counseling and restoration. In his early success he was tempted and fell in moral failure, thus violating not just God’s commands but his own vision for being an agent of redemption. His story includes an amazing, long-term personal recovery process and restoration back to ministry. But until the Vision co::Lab he had not found his way back to the original vision of being a counselor-restorer. Why not? As you can imagine, fear and shame wreak havoc. 

As I read his letter, I was so encouraged. I sensed the grand cycle working its way out again: 

BIRTH OF A VISION  >> DEATH OF A VISION >> BIRTH OF A VISION

It made me wonder where you might be right now. I have been so helped by realizing this pattern, and leaning into God in the tough times. The amazing thing is that the rebirth of the vision may resemble what it was the first time, or it may be different. But it is always better. It is always sweeter.

• Abraham looked at his son differently and trusted his God more completely.
  
• I carried my text book with more gratitude and felt a greater responsibility for my seminary training.
  
• A pastor friend knows a deeper depth of grace and restoration will multiple grace and restoration like never before.

Do you have a dream that’s been overshadowed? May God be your only vision. And  keep dreaming.

I am meeting with a pilot group of 12 churches and 12 consultant-practitioners known as Future Travelers. The group is led by Alan Hirsch.  The 12 churches are large growing mega-churches that represent 90,000 in weekend attendance. Some of the churches involved include: 

• Austin Stone
• Christian Community Church
• Rock Harbor
• Granger Community Church
• Seacoast Church
• Kennsington Community Church
• Mountain Lake Church
• West Ridge Church 

What’s exciting about this group, is that these churches, most considered to be thought-leaders, are not satisfied with their current strategy. They are pushing the envelope of strategy in the name of things like “missional community” and “apostolic movement.”

KEY QUESTIONS WE’RE ASKING

• How does our declining church influence in our leading cultural cities, help us wake-up to the enormous need for completely new strategies? Right now we are in San Francisco which has a 4-6% churched from an evangelical perspective. 

• As we develop new strategies, how do we keep mission as the organizing principle of all we do? (That is, how are we thinking missional not just talking missional.)

• If our best church models will not even come close to touching 40% of our culture, how do we reach the other 60%? Here is a post from Tim Steven on “The Shrinking 40.”

• How do we get our best churches to a place of re-imagining the future and not just improving existing methods?

• How do we leverage the platform of the “attractional,” mega-church to integrate and launch initiatives that multiply the mission with new “incarnational” strategies. 

• Is the multi-site “strategy of the day” just a stepping stone to a more viral and exponential strategy to expansion that could be captured by the progression: MEGA  > MULTI > MICRO. Read Todd Wilson’s Micro Manifesto. 

I will continue to post learning from this group.

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