Vision (Part 2)

As odd as this may sound to some of you, I think that a fully functioning vision must consider three things: (1) what is happening right now, (2) what can we be/do with God’s help, (3) how things age supposed to be in the kingdom of God.

There must be an honest appraisal of who we are and where we are if we are going to cast an attainable vision. I think this is the hardest part of vision casting. Frankly, it is much easier for me to dream a God-sized dream than to assess the time, effort, and pain necessary to get from where the church is to where we think God wants it to be.

The inability to correctly assess the church’s current situation was my greatest mistake in my first pastorate. I knew where I wanted to see the church go. I knew from Scripture what the kingdom of God looks like. But what I did not effectively do was assess the church’s ability to realize the vision I thought God was showing me. I did not know that we couldn’t get there from here.

When I was in high school, I worked as a stocker at a local supermarket. The store was geographically situated 7 miles directly south of my childhood home, but I drove over twice that many miles to get to work. Why? There was no road that went directly from my hometown to the town I worked in. I had to drive 6 miles south and east to get off the mountain (I literally grew up on a mountain in West Virginia) and then drive 10 miles south and west along the river to get to the Poca Supermarket.

The problem with getting to the supermarket was a common one for those who lived and still live in my hometown. One simply cannot get anywhere by driving in a straight line. While it is a short distance “as the crow flies” from one place to the other, road travel in the hills never proceeds in a straight line. Why? Because the hilly landscape demands that the road system conform to the terrain. In places, it is simply impossible to make the land conform to the road. Therefore most roads wind, twist, and turn in accordance to the land.

As leaders and pastors, I think we can learn something from the road builders of West Virginia. Might it be the better part of wisdom to journey according to the lay of the land as we cast and implement vision? Are there times when the terrain of ministry forces us to take a longer route to get where we want to go?