Will Mancini

• God still speaks

• If your vision is not stunningly unique, you probably don’t have one 

• However clear the leader is, a surprising gap exists between the leader’s vision and the team’s clarity

• Leaders emotionally substitute two things for real vision: 1) simplistic answers (copycat vision) or 2) busyness (more is more)

• The easiest measure of sustained clarity is the ability to say “no” repeatedly, and feel good about it

• Followers need vision because the future is not here yet and their activity today lacks meaning

• The best way to know “what should be” is to do a better job knowing “what was,” “what is,” and “what could be” 

• Vision moves through people not paper

• With a little training anyone can be an everyday visionary

• Vision dripping is more important than vision casting (#visiondrip)

I just finished a great day with the Faithbridge team and the folks at Granger Community Church in South Bend, IN. The team is made up of humble and leadership-savvy folks who serve the broader church through great coaching and content. The list includes, Tim Stevens, Kem Meyer, Mark Beeson, Mark Waltz and a ministry called WiredChurches.com

On the plane out, I reread Kem Meyer’s book, Less Noise. Less Clutter. It’s a unique book on church communication with practical insights, illustrations, humor and lots of juicy bullet lists. Here are some thoughts on “Nobody’s Listening:”

1. People aren’t open to your change prescription
   
2. People aren’t motivated by your need
3. People don’t know who you are
4. People multi-task and can’t remember squat
5. People are turned off by lack of preparation
6. People relate when you talk about them or people like them
7. People feel left out and frustrated when you use insider language
8. People are not impressed with your technical language or holy dialect

Today I taught a group of leaders at Campus Crusade for Christ at the invitation of a new friend, Howard Levin, with Apollos Leadership.  My focus was not the typical start as I probed a relatively simple, yet profound place to think about leadership from the life of our Savior. 

Jesus launched the greatest worldwide movement in history. The question is, how did he develop his leaders?  

Surprisingly, Jesus didn’t create a leadership manual or conduct formal training courses. In fact, he dodged the use of many leadership terms that were a part of his culture’s dynamics of influence.

When you get to the core of Jesus’ influence through language, it really boils down to the dominant metaphors he used to shape his follower’s expectations. 

The first part of the day with Crusade leaders I covered the material from my book Building Leaders on this topic. I think this is some of the most important stuff on leadership we can reflect on, which is really a distillation of William Bennett’s work, Metaphors for Ministry. Below is a summary chart of 15 metaphors that Jesus used to create expectations of his followers. Brilliantly, Bennett arranges them by community and cause. The cause metaphors he distinguishes into images of people and things.

There is more than meets the eye to these images.

One recommendation: Take a look at these images with your leadership team. What insights and patterns do you see? How are the metaphors in each column the same and how are they different? I’ll continue to post my reflections on these 15 but I highly recommend you fast forward to the book.

We can quickly assent to the fact that all kingdom-minded ministry is truly collaborative and not competitive. Yet, if we are really honest, there is a practical and true competition that people doing ministry in North America are going to feel. And it is real.

How can we think about this competition with clarity? Basically, the sense of competition is always present when people have choices. They have a choice of where to go for church, where to give their money. A church planter has a choice about planting networks. When someone wants to find a vehicle for overseas missions, there are choices. Even within a church, a volunteer has a choice of where to serve.

How should the kingdom-minded leader respond to this sense of competition? 

1) Know how you are uniquely called to make a kingdom difference. The truth is, if you can’t quickly do this, you should immediately begin a process to discover and articulate it. If you really can’t differentiate your ministry you should seriously consider closing shop and joining the competition. The mantra is “differentiate or die.” 

2) Study the strengths of other ministries. When you are clear about your unique role, it will free you to really understand and appreciate what other ministries are doing. It will also help you appreciate and articulate your own distinctives. Most importantly, it will prepare you for the next step.

3) Speak well about the competition. A little secret I learned long ago from great sales people, Christian or not, is that they always talk good about their competition. From Christ’s viewpoint, not only should we be always gracious, but we ought to have the integrity  to connect real needs to best solutions. If you have discerned well, you can cultivate a spirit to  support and promote other ministries and not only your own. It is a beautiful thing to live and model leadership with this kind of egoless clarity!

4) Live your call with passion and leave the results up to God. Ultimately it is important not to be distracted by, concerned about, or jealous of the fruitfulness of other ministries. Many leaders are weighed down by such emotions and deceptions. Over the years I have worked on many “levels” pastoring, served in para-church ministries, and started my own. I know first-hand the soul-sickness of comparison and I have had to repent many times! Keep repenting until you have the clarity to pursue your unique contribution with nothing to prove and nothing to loose.

I couldn’t resist telling this story. A church recently finished a Vision Pathway with Auxano. With the new mission articulation beginning to shift and shape the ministry (1 of the 5 questions discerned through the visioning work), a church staff wrote the following note on a workroom refrigerator:

BECAUSE OF OUR MISSION TO  ____________________ PLEASE KEEP THE COFFEE AREA CLEANED.

This note appears to be an application of what I encourage all of the time: Drip the vision (#visiondrip) into the daily conversation and daily flow of leadership. Tie everything you do back to the mission.

But this time the application went wrong. No, the mission of Christ is not provided for you to anchor your petty workroom rules and enforce it on everyone else. The mission is a reminder of what we are all supposed to be doing, so that I can start with my motives, my heart, my actions and my modeling.