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After 25 years of touting vision, I’ve concluded that it has often been overdone.
Vision is essential, mind you, but it is not sufficient.
Lack of vision is common among pastors of plateaued and declining churches, but not universal. We find that many of them do have vision but lack four additional skills. Without these four skills, vision ends up being mere aspiration and an endless source of frustration.
In the presence of these four additional skills, vision becomes reality. The church moves toward a more preferable future. Without them, it remains plateaued or in decline despite the pastor’s compelling vision.
1. Thinking
Vision is one of a category of skills I refer to as reflective thought. This skill set is the ability to ponder various possible futures and discern how to realign the church’s resources and activities to achieve a more desirable outcome.
Activities within this skill set include reflection, insight, evaluation, intuition, brainstorming, design and creativity. These enable a revitalization leader to game out multiple possible futures, make wise decisions despite having incomplete information and settle on a course of action most likely to move the church toward the fulfillment of its mission. Of course, this will often involve consulting or collaborating with others, but the results flow from the leader’s private “thought world.”
2. Analysis
After the leader (or leadership team) has settled on a vision, someone has to develop a strategy. This is an analytical skill. It requires someone to identify goals and objectives, analyze schedules, crunch numbers, dole out assignments, create efficient communications and determine the best way to move from present reality to future fulfillment of the vision.
This skill includes working at a level of detail that often frustrates the “thinkers.” They are the “big picture” types who get frustrated if they have to develop the strategy because keeping an eye on the details drains them of energy.
Thus, a close working relationship between visionary and the strategist is crucial. Do you see why the ability to pick the right people to become part of the leadership and “vision casting” team is so crucial? Without strong analytical skills—whether provided by a collaborator or, in rare cases, found within the “visionary”—nothing will come of the vision.
3. Persuasion
This is another skill that’s absolutely required. Vision means change. Change requires training and informing. Someone must recruit the hearts and minds of the church members. A significant portion of the church body—those 15 percent consisting of innovators and early adopters—must join the cause. Thus, a persuader and a messaging plan touting the vision and strategy have to be developed. Without those, the vision never gets off the ground. Nothing changes. With effective persuasion, resources will be aligned to fulfill the strategy.
This calls on the pastor to expend high levels of social and physical energy. We often deal with pastors who possess vision but lack the ability to persuade people to join the effort and the ability to motivate over the long haul. Once again, if the pastor does not possess these persuasive skills and the physical and social vitality, recruiting becomes mission critical.
Without persuasion skills, the visionary is but an “army of one.”
4. Implementation
Effective leadership also requires implementation skills. This is the ability to take personal responsibility to ensure that the strategy is executed. Only then does the vision becomes reality. This leadership skill includes the ability to delegate (effectively) and hold others accountable, a single-minded focus on aligning all available resources to fulfillment of the strategy, and high levels of physical and social energy. George Barna puts his finger on this aspect of leadership when he states that “leadership is the process of motivating, mobilizing, resourcing, and directing people to passionately and strategically pursue a vision from God that a group jointly embraces.”
Has the vision thing been overdone?
Perhaps.
When someone says that it is the key to effective leadership, I think they’re guilty of overgeneralization. I’ve been guilty of this myself. The past 19 years of working as a church consultant have taught me that as important as vision is, it’s only one of five crucial skills required of the revitalization pastor.
When vision is met with careful thought, wise strategy, effective persuasion and energetic implementation, the preferred future eventually becomes the present reality.
Photo source: istock
 | Bud Brown is an experienced ministry leader, writer and educator. He is co-founder of Turnaround Pastors and co-author of the ground-breaking Pastor Unique: Becoming A Turnaround Leader. He brings special expertise to change leadership in the local church, mentoring pastors to become revitalization leaders, training churches how to find and recruit the best talent, and training leadership teams how to achieve their shared goals. Learn More » |
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