Vision

One of the things that jumped out to me while reading It was this whole idea of vision. This is one thing that churches do not do a good job of, equally, pastors do not do a good job of framing a vision.

Craig Groeschel said, “When it comes to vision it needs to be simple, memorable, portable, quantifiable.”

Most churches point to the great commission using words like glorifying God, reaching people, loving people, loving God. These are important, biblical. The problem is it does not meet the 4 things I listed above.

I remember working in churches who had a vision, mission, purpose, strategic and discipleship statement. This is problematic in that it is too much to remember. They are usually all right, good, and biblical. You just can’t remember it.

So the question might be, how do you figure out a vision? What is God calling you to? A few questions to help answer that question:

1. What can we do better than anyone else? (who is at your church, ages, life stage, backgrounds, etc.)
2. What do you talk about more than anything else? As a pastor, there is one message that comes out no matter what you talk about. (Gary Lamb has a great post about that here)
3. If you could do just one thing as a church, what would that be?
4. What do you want your church to be known for?

I have been thinking a lot about this recently as I am getting ready for our next series Becoming… where we will walk through why Revolution exists. I want us to be razor sharp in our focus and be clear about what we are about.

In a few weeks, I’ll share some other thoughts on vision (what we are about at Revolution and how to stay on track).