Editor’s Note:  This is the first of a two-part series on Strategic Church Leadership.  This week Michael Fletcher shares about the Power of Vision in Leading a Church.  Since 1985, Michael has been the senior pastor of Manna Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which has grown from 350 to 4,000 active members.  SermonCentral recommends his book Overcoming Barriers to Growth. Next week Aubrey Malphurs of Dallas Seminary will share 12 Key Strategic Steps for Leading Your Church.

The Power of Vision in Leading Your Church

by Michael Fletcher

 

Not long ago I asked a group of some thirty young men whom I was training for full-time ministry a question that brought varied and thoughtful answers. “What is the most important thing to make a church or ministry successful?” Although each was convinced his answer was correct, and most identified a piece of the puzzle for a church’s overall long-term health, all but three missed the mark. If we have learned one thing from the church growth movement over the years, it is that effective leadership must be present for growth to occur.

What is the magic of leadership? Why is it so important in taking a church or ministry where God wants it to go? The answer is this: It isn’t really leadership itself or even the personality of the leader that moves a church or ministry along, but the natural outworking or application of that leadership gift within the person of the leader. Simply put, it is what good leaders naturally do that produces and sustains momentum. Let me explain.

Effective leadership always expresses itself in two ways: vision and faith. This is true in the secular and sacred worlds alike. Left alone and placed in charge of anything, a leader will begin to dream about the future and fashion an ideal in his mind that is brighter than the present. At first, the dream is only a dream, distant and unattainable. But over time, as he turns this dream around and around in his mind and heart, a confidence begins to grow that what he pictures can become a reality. Soon he begins to share this new vision with others, who, at first glance recognize the improbability of the new ideal but are strangely drawn toward a belief that it can actually come to pass. Somehow, they can see what the leader sees.

Employees or church members begin to work with a calm assurance that the new plan will work and a new future will be formed. People who before came to work to earn a paycheck, or came to enjoy a church service, are now marshaled into a force to accomplish a task, and the business or congregation moves forward as a result. The leader made this happen, but not by simply being in charge. Progress occurred because of the natural manifestation of true leadership among a people: the expression of vision and faith.

The Formation of Vision

The formation of vision is a solo project. It begins with a dream. Dreaming is easy for most, but turning dreams into an attainable vision is the product of leadership. What is vision anyway? In a Christian context, vision is the ability to see what God wants to do in a given situation. In reference to the local church vision is the ability to see what God wants to do in and through a group of people. The leader sees the future.

Vision has everything to do with sight, but not natural sight. Vision is seeing though the eyes of the heart. True vision is far more powerful than natural sight. A leader filled with vision can look beyond small numbers, financial difficulty, and impossibilities of the present and see, with clarity and passion, the future as if it has already come to pass. For the leader, present problems are temporary inconveniences to be tolerated on the road to what will certainly be a more glorious future. The future is just around the corner. In seeing it, the leader can almost touch it.

What, then, is the difference between a vision and a dream? Everything! Most people dream. But a dream without faith is a fantasy. There is nothing wrong with having a dream, with meditating on a fantasy about what God could do. In fact, all vision is drawn from the well of dreams. The difference is that vision is a statement of what God will do. When leaders first conceive possibilities for the future, they are like everyone else - dreaming of a better tomorrow. But somewhere along the line, something more happens. God begins to impart faith to the leader. The dream mutates and becomes more concrete.

Through prayer, the leader gives God access to the dream he holds in his heart. God then “speaks” to the leader by breathing faith into those parts of the dream that reflects God’s plan for the local church he leads. This faith makes the vision seem attainable. To those looking on, the vision seems unreachable at first, but when the leader speaks and shares his heart on the matter, faith acts like a contagion - others begin to believe that the impossible is now possible.

Without the element of faith, a dream remains the creation of the human mind - a fantasy. Many people, enamored with a dream, chase it, hoping it will come true. But the Bible says, “ He who works his land will have abundant food but the one who chases fantasies will have his fill of poverty” (Proverbs 28:19). Fantasies never materialize because they inherently lack the faith necessary to mobilize one to work effectively, whereas the faith required to create a real vision inspires the visionary and those around him to put their best effort forward.

Let me be clear. The senior leader is not the creator of vision but rather the caretaker. Dreams are largely the creation of man, but vision, true vision, comes from God.

Many times, after a seminar on growing the local church, I have seen senior pastors sat their hearts to find God’s vision for the house. Some show up the next day with a vision in hand, all typed out. They missed the most important point and short-cut the process. As a result they merely tip their hand to God and lose out on the impartation of faith, leaving their vision powerless. The hard work of  vision is in the wrestling with God!


A leader prays for God’s vision, waits, receives nothing. Prays some more, dies to self, waits, wonders, prays. Slowly faith begins to rise , slowly the pieces come together. The picture is rarely what he first thought it would be and is always larger than he would have constructed himself. It is no longer man-sized. Further, he finds that he is not at the center. This vision is God-sized, and it will take His power to produce it. The pastor knows it is God’s idea and He will bring it to pass, no question about it! The leader is passionate in his belief, and because of that, others catch the vision and work to see it occur. In the end, only God will get the glory.

This may be the hardest but most important job of the senior pastor - finding God’s vision for the local church he leads. The Bible says,  “It is the glory of God to conceal the matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings” (Proverbs 25:2). God isn’t being unkind in “hiding” the vision within himself - just the opposite. In concealing it, He forces us to seek Him, and in seeking Him, we find more than a simple plan. We are infused with faith. Remember, it is faith that attracts others to the vision; it is faith that enables them to believe that it can actually occur; it is faith that will motivate them to work toward the end. The best thing God could do for us is to hide the vision in His own heart, because in seeking it out we become the leader that others follow!

All of this dreaming, praying, believing, and seeing happens in the heart of one person. That is why the formation of vision is a solo project. One person dreams and interacts with God over that dream. God sorts through the ideas contained in the dream, breathing life into some of them, reconstructing the dream into a vision of His formation, all the while imparting faith. Some believe thus type of faith is actually a gift to leaders for just this purpose - making them guardians of a vision from God to the end that God’s people are mobilized into action as a unit.

Moses serves as a beautiful example of the singular nature of vision formation. When God decided it was time to deliver His people from bondage, He called on one man - Moses. It wasn’t that Moses was inherently specia l - he was simply selected. God gave him specific instructions and commissioned him to lead. Moses anticipated conflict with some Israelites who might have challenged his authority, but God was undaunted. Moses was to be the man. And though Aaron was allowed to stand at Moses’ side, it was Moses alone who met God at the burning bust, and Moses alone who ascended the mountain for direction.

When Aaron and Miriam challenged Moses as the solo voice of visionary leadership, God responded with sharp criticism of their attitudes. When Korah and his allies said that they should have a hand in shaping the course for the Hebrews to follow, the ground actually opened up and swallowed 250 of them! When God wanted to give direction to the people, He called Moses alone to the top of the mountain and into the Tent of Meeting.

It has always been God’s pattern to use one leader who would speak for Him in guiding the people into the vision of His destiny for them. Before Moses, there were Abraham and Noah. After Moses came Joshua, Samuel, Gideon and Deborah. They were followed by others: David, Daniel, and Jeremiah, to name a few. Some were quick to step to the fore, while others recoiled from the prospect of solitary leadership, but all were selected by God to cast a vision for the people.

The Power of Vision is excerpted from Overcoming Barriers to Growth by Michael Fletcher (Bethany House).  © 2006.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.