Four areas to find your vision
If you are struggling to find God’s vision for your church below are four areas to help you.
But first you must understand the difference between mission and vision.
Mission never changes. Your mission is why you exist.
Vision can be temporary/seasonal. For example you might have a vision for Christmas or Easter or a building campaign or summer.
Problems: Often your vision is found in the solutions to the problem you must solve. Identifying problems is a main task for a leader. Once you can clearly identify a problem your vision will be found in your solution. For example; currently our kids department has outgrown it’s space and that’s a problem. So our vision has become to relocate them to a much larger wing of the church.
Strengths: Your vision is also found in what your church is good at. (core competency) You may be good a worship, or a food pantry, or missions, or prayer, or fund-raising, etc… Leverage that strength as a part of your vision. Your people will easily get behind what they can do with excellence.
Opportunities: The opportunities that are before you are also a key indicator of vision. For example, Easter is a big opportunity for outreach. Your vision should include a plan to leverage the opportunity. Currently we are under the Corona Virus scare. We are running facebook and instagram ads this week targeted at our city to watch our services online this weekend. It’s an opportunity to be leveraged.
Convictions: When God convicts you of something often he is leading you to something new. I’m not talking about the conviction of sin. I’m talking about the conviction that something needs to change. If you pay attention to that still small voice challenging you to change something often a new vision is found by facing the conviction. I’ve had this happen twice in the past three years (and may be in the midst of another one right now). Both times when I listened to God and changed course on something the church united and moved forward in big ways. I’ve learned to lean in to those times.
