As churches, we don’t create the vision for our churches. We discover it. From God. As church leaders, to discover God’s vision, however, means we have to search and listen for God’s clear voice regarding His distinct vision for the church we lead. This is why, by the way, I get a little concerned by some of the current trends I see among many new churches in ripping THEIR vision statements off other church’s websites or trendy pastors’ blog sites!
I have seen too many “cookie cutter” vision statements lately on new church plants’ websites and blogs. You know what a cookie cutter does, right? A cookie cutter makes the next cookie look just like the last one. That works well for Christmas cookies, but not well for church planting! Church planter: Does your church look just like every other church plant? If so, why are you planting it? Why not just join theirs?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against Pastors learning from one another and even rubbing off on one another. My fear is simply that many of us are not willing to do the “hard work” these days of being still and patient for long enough to receive God’s vision for our churches! If we’re getting our vision for our church from another church, then we’re getting it from the wrong place! Visions come from God, not another church!
Many of us as Pastors could use this Holiday Season to get away from the busyness and the grind (and even our people) for a little while to GET WITH GOD and DISCOVER HIS UNIQUE VISION FOR OUR CHURCH! While we cut cookies this year, let’s commit NOT to be a cookie cutter church this next year!
By the way, Will Mancini, author of Church Unique will be speaking at our churchplanters.com conference Feb 22-23: “Velocity”. He’ll be talking about HOW we as a church can discover, communicate, and implement the unique vision God wants us to have. Get registered now!
A cookie-cutter vision probably is not the best thing to have, but perhaps it's not the worst either. If the vision is God-honoring, biblically sound, and it appears God is blessing that vision, then for the leader who feels the call to lead something new, but who may not feel like they've been given a clear vision, just a calling, it might not be a bad thing.
Then there is the pastor who's congregation has no faith in him as a leader, even though that's what God has placed him there to be? For pastors often employed by their denomination instead of the local church, the people have seen pastors come and go over the years, each with his own "vision" (aka agenda) and they know that they can and will outlast the pastor, and so they don't engage. Why not try to use what others are doing to bring people on board by pointing to places where a given vision is thriving?
What concerns me is when pastors or church leadership decides to bolster their finances by offering "resources" on subjects such as "How to grow your church" or "How to Hear From God" or what ever that month's topic may be. As leaders in the church I believe we have a responsibility to each other not to make profit but to find ways to share what we're learning in a way that grows the kingdom.
As the pastor of a church that has grown and which has any right to claim we might know something about Mission, Vision, Values, Growth Barriers, Preaching, Small Groups, or what ever the area happens to be, before we ever got to that point, we had a full time salary. Paul says the working is worth his wage, so I'm not talking about pastoring for free. What I am saying is that if we are managing our finances, by the time we are in a position of influence, our financial needs are probably being taken care of through the offerings of the people we pastor.
We COULD be giving these "resources" away. If we truly believe that the cause of Jesus is the most important cause, we could be giving away our knowledge, our experience and our wisdom.
Right now I'm sitting here in from of my computer. It has a built in camera, built in microphone, and the software comes with it that is designed to make podcasts, either video or audio.
Most of our church's have web hosting which we could then upload those messages to and offer to allow other pastors and leaders to download for free. It wouldn't require a special website, or even a web page. If you have hosting space, you can upload the file and give people a link to it via email that will allow them to download it.
Ultimately here's where I'm going with this:
How is making money off the desperate hopes of church leaders that someday they will be able to make SOME kind of impact in their church that will lead to growth, both spiritual and numerical, that the vision they lay awake at night praying about and trying to find a way to make it happen - Is that really so very different than the money changers sitting in the temple courtyard trying to make a buck by trading "unclean" money for "clean" money so that the people could make an accepted sacrifice to receive forgiveness?
May we find ways to grow the kingdom that honors God and brings hope to the commoner.
Posted by: Jim VanGilder | November 25, 2009 at 11:44 AM