4 Questions to Ask About Your Vision
Proverbs 29:18 says that “where there is no vision, the people perish” and this certainly applies to your life and whatever you might be leading. No vision, no life.
You need vision for your Monday through Friday, but also for your family. You need vision for that relationship or team, department or school.
YOU NEED VISION.
You need vision and so do they. Whoever you might be leading needs you to be CLEAR and PASSIONATE about the vision. As for me, that’s my family, our church staff, and you, Mission Church. You’d be shocked at how much time Tommy, Dan, our church staff, and I spend on vision. We talk about it, pray about it, cry about it and intercede over it. We shape the vision, refine the vision, and then communicate the vision in every environment, at every opportunity. It’s one of our 10 Staff Principles that we have on the wall in our offices: “Our Why is My Why”.
This is why. Every July I spend a few weeks away praying, writing and listening to God about our vision. I ask God to speak, affirm, convict and stir. I ask God to make our vision fresh in my heart by placing a new seasonal vision phrase on my mind that will help move our ongoing and unchanging vision forward. Some of these seasonal vision phrases are ones you might remember: Love Where You Live, Next is Now, Made For More, Never the Same, Make Room for More, The Way Forward, and Into the Storm.
These are seasonal vision phrases that we share in August and January to our Partners and church at large to help boost our ongoing, unchanging vision forward. You might be asking “What is our ongoing, unchanging vision?” I’m glad you asked! Our vision at Mission that we’ve chiseled into stone is to experience a movement of Jesus in The 10, in our lifetime.
Is it thorough? No.
Is it clear? You bet.
Is it inspiring? I sure think so.
Imagine what a movement of Jesus in The 10 would do for families, for teenagers, for the working poor, and for the spiritually bankrupt.
Imagine what a movement of Jesus in The 10 would do towards decreasing metrics among teen pregnancy, abortion rates, suicide rates, and for divorce rates. Can you imagine?!?!
Not only can this vision happen, but it MUST happen.
This is why our team gets excited when we see or hear anything that sounds like a movement of Jesus, and we text one another the wave emoji. 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊
We do this because like a wave, you cannot create movement but you sure can catch the wave for the ride of a lifetime. To better understand the wave emoji, watch this sermon from our Good to Great series.
The people of Mission get so fired up when we see signs of movement: from new business sprouting up, to new Christ-centered leaders coming to The 10 in our school districts, to new baptisms, and to new churches. We get so excited when we see people coming to church, and to people going as the church just not at the church. From people becoming Partners in the gospel to folks becoming Planters of the gospel.
These are all signs of a movement of Jesus taking place. 🌊
By the way...Planter plug: This Sunday, July 11th there will be a Planter Gathering after the 10:30 service at Mission. You will get a chance to meet our new Director of Missional Communities, Sean Durbin, as well as connect with other Planters who are part of Missional Communities. You won’t want to miss it! Register HERE to let us know you’re coming!
Back to vision. One of the books I take guys in my leadership cohort through is a book called Visioneering by Andy Stanley. It’s one of my all-time favorites. In it, Andy walks through a great process in creating and shaping vision. One of the aspects of this process that helped me the most was around the importance of brevity and stickiness.
Andy writes, “It’s gotta be simple, it’s gotta be portable, it’s gotta be repeatable–To make your vision simple, it can’t be complete. Complete is not memorable or transferable.”
This is why a vision statement can be thorough or it can be sticky, but it can’t be both. As you craft and shape the vision statement for your family, company, or team, these 4 questions are helpful filters.
1. How quickly do tears form when you communicate or think about the vision?
2. Is your vision repeatable?
3. Who would suffer the most if you did not create or stick with this vision?
4. Does your vision align with the truth of God’s Word?
These questions are helpful and if this post creates curiosity about vision, please pick up a copy of Visioneering. You’ll thank me later.
I am already eager to be back with our Partners on Tuesday night, August 3rd. Tommy, Dan and I will share our hearts for what we sense God saying to our church fam as we gear up for our 10th ministry season this fall. Spoiler alert, it will have something to do with VISION!
From a cabin in the Northwoods,
Jon