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20/20 Foresight
The importance of developing authentic vision for your church.
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Chapman: Each year at the annual meeting, the church votes on our statement of purpose, our strategies, and our current objectives. These aren't changed every year, but they are ratified every year. I should say, though, that vision is much broader than just our formal statement of purpose. Vision is deeper, wider, longer range; it has to do with conceptual things, intangibles. We want to be God-centered; we want to be a church that's open to new people; we want to reach people who are not churched. That's not part of our statement of purpose, but it's part of our vision. Lay Leadership: How important is it to have a vision statement? What would be the effect if you did not have one? Chapman: It helps to define where things fit and who has responsibility. Of course, the purpose statement is further defined by our specific strategies and objectives. But it helps us decide whether we do something or not. Anderson: When some proposal comes up, we often will say, "How does this fit into our statement of purpose?" For instance, and this is a touchy area for some people, we used it recently to decide whether to allow certain kinds of fund raising and whether to have offerings at certain events. We have, for example, a major concert coming up. Our purpose is "to honor God and to bring lives into harmony with him and one another." The question becomes: Are we more likely to bring non-Christian lives into harmony with God by taking an offering at that concert or by not taking an offering? We decided by not having an offering. We felt it was more important to fulfill the purpose of the church than to get four hundred dollars in the offering plate. Lay Leadership: If we attended Wooddale this Sunday, how would we detect the vision? What would we feel? What would we see? Chapman: I think you'd feel the fellowship. You would be greeted. I'd expect many people would speak to you, not just the greeters who have that responsibility. Anderson: We're far more concerned that people experience fellowship, discipleship, and evangelism than that they can articulate it. Most people think in terms of the whole only in relationship to the part that affects them. We, for instance, have very little concern about the corporate structure of the Standard Oil Company, but we have a great deal of interest in whether they offer self service or full service at the local station. That's true of the church as well: Most people understand the vision in terms of the part that affects them. Chapman: The struggles we've had in the church have not come because of the broad vision; the struggles have come over specific little ways of implementing it. |             |
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