Will Mancini

I get a lot of questions about the relationship between a church’s vision and the senior or lead pastor. Does the vision originate from the pastor or from the people? What happens to the vision when the pastor leaves? While many variables can complicate these question, there is at least one principle we can assert with clarity: Even though a senior leader may be the primary voice of the vision, any effective leader with a worthwhile vision will raise up a leadership community that carries it. The better the clarity and integration into the fabric of an organization, the more the vision will transcend any one person.

Many people express skepticism about this point. Why? Because we have so few models of culturally integrated vision that it is easy to rely on a charismatic leader as the substitute for real vision.

Therefore, it’s a beautiful thing to behold when it is working right. One example is the recent pastoral transition at Mobberly Baptist Church in East Texas, an Auxano client from years ago. I talked recently with the new senior pastor, Glynn Stone. Glynn is a gifted leader who understood that the leaders did the hard work of discernment and articulation years before his arrival. His first ten weeks he preached two series: six weeks on the existing mission and four weeks on the existing strategy. Glynn recounts, “I noticed that the church had the vision. When it exists, and its biblical and its working, there’s no need to change it. When I told this to the search committee, they began salivating, because they wanted a leader who recognized what God had already done.” Read Glynn’s Blog

I ran across this short article that is worth passing along. The author is a business guy who talks about “aspirational fields” as a way to align culture and energize an organization. The aspirational field in an organization acts like a magnetic field that aligns all of the small iron filings (like some of us did in chemistry lab growing up). In the organization, its the people that all face a common direction with a shared heartbeat for a better future. The article is, A Shortcut to Cultural Alignment by Paul Levesque

I just finished spring break in Park City snowboarding with my three kids. Each morning as the blinds opened from our kitchen window, the question of clarity was answered as we noted the “visibility” of the day. Technically, visibility is a measure of the distance at which an object or light can be clearly discerned. It was funny how visibility affected the emotion of the morning. Tuesday morning, the bright sunshine and clear blue sky, energized our steps to get on the mountain. Thursday morning the fog and snow left my 8-year old daughter more interested in the day off. Higher visibility on the slopes meant more confidence, less fear and more fun!

Leaders create visibility for people in their organization. Consider how your clarity as a leader affects the emotional well being of followers. Clarity determines levels of credibility, confidence, joy, and propensity for risk, verses attitudes of mistrust, doubt, uncertainty, protectiveness and fear.

Howard Hendricks used to say, “Where there’s a fog in the pulpit, there’s a mist in the pew.”

FYI for science buffs: The international definition of fog is a visibility of less than 1 kilometre (3,300 ft); mist is a visibility of between 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) and 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) and haze from 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) to 5 kilometres (3.1 mi)

When I spoke at last week’s Generous Churches Leadership Community, participates were given a complimentary copy of Church Unique. The books weren’t supposed to be out yet, so Chris Willard and Stephanie Plagens, really pulled the rabbit out of the hat and surprised me. What does it feel like to see a book you worked on for 18 months for the first time? I hate to sound sacrilegious, but it runs a close second to seeing the birth of your baby! (I watched all three of my children in raw, living color.) The only difference is the birth of a book is a little less miraculous and a little less messy. Even Max Lucado who has sold over 50 million copies says of writing a book, “It’s like giving birth to barbwire!”

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.”