Vision Shaping Part I

Vision Shaping Part I

Success and Desire

Leadership expert John Maxwell says, “Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities.  They vary greatly in their desires to reach their potential.”  In order to reach your potential as an individual or organization you have to have a clear vision of exactly what you want, know why you want it, and also determine when you want it to happen.

What's The Deal About Vision?

But just how important is vision for a start up missional church?  Who shapes the vision for a local church?  

In an often quoted passage from the Bible, Proverbs 29:18 says, “Where there is no vision the people perish but happy are those who keep the law.”  Normally we only quote the first half of the verse not quite sure what to do with the second.  Evidently vision is important if we don’t want to perish.  

As a start up church, Lightshine is in the infancy phase of the lifecycle of a church, but we also know that we want to be around for the foreseeable future.  I find it fascinating that vision is closely linked with keeping God’s commands.  Maybe God has given us a vision for the world, for the church.  Maybe that vision is contained in Scripture and that our obedience to God’s commands has something to do with it.  

The idea of God’s kingdom, which has come in part in Jesus‘ arrival and will someday be completed upon His return provides plenty of vision.  I like to ask good questions more than I like answering them.  What are the characteristics of this kingdom or reign of God?  What does this kingdom look like?  What will it one day look like when it is complete?  

We get clues all over the Bible, but we don’t get a step by step instruction guide to building the kingdom of God.  Only God can truly build His kingdom, but God does seem to ask for our help in extending it, or offering it to others; pulling back the curtain a bit so that others can see it breaking into our world.

God’s Word may not read like an instruction manual with step by step instructions, but it definitely does not lack in vision.  Quite the contrary it contains the greatest vision ever cast; a loving God who loved so deeply that He gave everything in Jesus who came to offer salvation in living, dying, and rising so that we might have abundant life both now and forever.  God wants the world to know the vision cast in Scripture.

First and foremost it is God’s vision.  But how might this vision take on flesh in a 21st century, small, suburban missional church plant like Lightshine?  In answering questions like this, we help create a vision for Lightshine that tries to be faithful and obedient to what God has commanded.  Happy are those who keep the law.

How do we take God’s amazing vision for the world, the Church, and our community and make it our own?  If we do this well, we just might reach our potential and survive past the infancy stage in the lifecycle of a church.  If John Maxwell is right, then we have the abilities that can make us successful.  The question is, do we have the desire?  I believe that we do.  More on this next time.

Robert Douglas - Organizing Pastor - Lightshine Church