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!



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