Notes on Leadership, Part 7- Vision

So with Jesus established as our foundation, and with our mission set as our first building block in becoming the church Christ wants us to be in order to reach the lost for Christ; let’s begin to look at the other building blocks that God builds our church.

(Building Block #2) Vision- Who We Are

“Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”

-Proverbs 29:18 (KJV)

With our Mission in focus, it is crucial that we are given a vision of how it will be accomplished and what it will look like as we accomplish it.

It is so true what King Solomon wrote in Proverbs nearly 3,000 years ago! Without vision, the people will perish. Other Bible translations say the people ‘will be unrestrained’. We need a vision to aim for, to hope for, and to dream of as we are taking part in the mission. If we don’t have one, we will have nothing to unite us together and nothing to keep us on mission- we will perish.

We choose our Vision Statement to be the ultimate description of ‘who we are’ in Christ and ‘who we desire to be’. This vision is our slogan- our battle cry! It is our intent that it would define us to those who encounter our people or something with our name or logo on it.

And just like the Gospel, like Jesus, and like our Mission; our Vision should never change, only our plans or our methods.

Sam Walton

Sam Walton’s, the founder of Walmart, Vision Statement for Walmart from the beginning was, “Providing value to the customer in order to make people’s lives better.” And his vision never changed. Plans came and went. Methods were constantly changed. New and creative ideas were always experimented with, but the vision stayed the same and the company was and is successful because of it.

Big Fish, Little Tank:

Without Vision; our boundaries, our boarders, and our bowls are too small. Without Vision; we will never grow to our fullest potential to reach the lost for Christ. We will be shooting into the dark with no target to aim for.

Big Fish Little Tank Continued

Without having a Vision or even simply having a small Vision; it is almost as if you have an anti-Vision: a limit that you place on yourself or your organization of how far you will go and how large you will grow- the answer to which is very little or not at all.

In a very small bowl, a goldfish will not grow to its largest possible size. In a large bowl, the goldfish has great potential to reach his largest possible size. Because there he has room to grow; he can see a greater distance in which he can travel and at some genetic level his body will know how large he can get.

Often times as a church, we shoot ourselves in the foot. Too often, we are like the large goldfish in the small bowl. When people ask us about our church, we say things like, “it’s a little church behind Les Schwab” or, if you’re more religious, “we’re a small body of Believers who are faithful with what God has given us.” But if you say that we are small when you are telling others about our church, often what they hear is,” we’re too small for you”, “we don’t want to grow”, or “we don’t want you here with us.” And if you say that we are a small body of faithful Believers; what you are really saying is that your relationship with Jesus is something that is personal and something to horde jealously to yourself. The truth is that you cannot be faithful unless you are being FRUITFUL.

But if we had Vision for this church; who we could be and where the Lord could take us, then we would have great unlimited room to grow and faith in God to see it through.

So in response to our Mission Statement, our Vision Statement is:

“Our Vision is to be a Community of Grace, Love, and Hope.”

We choose this Vision Statement because:

- We are (and we will strive to be) a community, a people, of Grace. Grace is when you get exactly what you don’t deserve. Grace is what God has given us. When we absolutely did not deserve it God gave us His Son as a living sacrifice to live a life that we could not live, to die a death we deserved to die, and to rise from the grave to conquer sin and death so that we can have an everlasting relationship with Him.

Grace is what we choose to offer those in our community- welcoming them with open arms regardless of who they are or what they have done into the new life that Christ offers them.

- We are (and we will strive to be) a community, a people of Love. Love is what you do to show someone how much they are worth. God is Love. In Love, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God loved us first and because of that, we choose to Love Him and the community around us.

- We are (and we will strive to be) a community, a people of Hope. Hope is something that we can assuredly look forward to. Our Hope is found in Christ. The Hope we have is that someday Jesus Christ is returning to restore His creation to perfection, to rid the world of sin and death, and to

Why We Choose This Vision Statement Continued, Hope

forever have fellowship with and reign over those He has saved. We choose to live out this blessed Hope in our lives so that all those we come into contact with can be impacted by it.

With a beautiful God-sized Vision such as this; there is no limit to what God could do through this church for our community if, and only if, we are willing to live out such a radical Vision-based lifestyle.

This brings us to our next Building Block: