May 28, 2025 • 24 mins
Is your church’s vision stalled or ineffective? In this episode, we break down actionable steps to create and communicate a compelling vision that drives real growth and engagement within your congregation. Discover how clarity and strategy can move your church forward, whether you’re starting from scratch or refreshing your current direction.
Join hosts Scott Ball and A.J. Mathieu from the Malphurs Group, whose expertise in church revitalization empowers ministries worldwide. Their passion: helping churches thrive with practical insights, real data, and biblically-rooted strategies.
What you'll hear in this episode:
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Why vision clarity directly boosts church growth (1:20)
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The first step: a “discernment” phase combining data and prayer (3:58)
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Crafting a vision draft that inspires buy-in (5:24)
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Cascading vision from the pulpit to every ministry area (11:24)
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How to measure, track, and celebrate progress—avoiding common pitfalls (17:04)
Links & Resources:
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Discover tools & start your 7-day free trial: Healthy Churches Toolkit
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Show notes & episode article: malphursgroup.com/292
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More from the Malphurs Group: Website
Follow us on social for more church leadership tips and updates!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Alright. Let's turn some vision into action right now on the Church
Revitalization Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the Church
Revitalization Podcast brought to you by the Malphurs Group
team, where each week we tackle important, actionable
topics to help churches thrive. And now here's your
hosts, Scott Ball and AJ Mathieu.
(00:24):
Welcome to the Church Revitalization podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm joined by
my friend and cohost, AJ Mathieu. AJ, my friend.
Good to see you this week on the podcast. Yes. Long
time long see. I see you all the time. Everybody doesn't need to
know that. They're like, these guys, they just get together a few times a year,
record a couple episodes. Yeah. That's exactly right. No. We we see each other all
(00:47):
the time. So this is today on podcast, the impetus
for this episode is I've been doing some work
for a a network of churches and some
doing some data development research
analysis on several of their churches. Some interesting trends have
come up from that data, and I thought that it would be kind of interesting
(01:09):
to not share all their data, but maybe just share
an insight from their data and then build an episode
off of that. So here here is, here's one piece of data.
Churches that had a vision clarity score in our church
ministry analysis or churches, rather, churches that increase their
vision score by five points, outpaced their peers
(01:33):
in church attendance growth by two percentage
points each year, which is really something. So
the higher the vision score, the more your church is going
to to grow numerically, which is maybe not surprising,
but still Yeah. This is not exactly revolutionary idea. Yeah.
But but there's definitely a high correlation there between how how clear
(01:55):
your vision is and how much your church is growing.
Yeah. And, you know, if if you've seen some stagnant growth, you
know, stagnant growth, by the way, doesn't mean no growth. So you can't
just look at a percentage number and go, oh, wow. We're really growing. You know,
look at it realistically and go, alright. In four
years, we added two families. That's not necessarily a growing
(02:17):
church. Well, yeah. I I guess, got to kinda state well, and we
commonly see this. I mean, this we our body of work is in
plateaued and declining churches mostly. You know, the majority of the churches
we work with. So we see we see repetitions of
scenarios and data frequently. And so, you know,
vision falls flat for largely the same
(02:39):
reasons in these churches, and it's that it's not
baked into the behavior. It's just an
idea presented one time, sometimes more than once,
but mostly, for the most part, one time, you know, at an annual
meeting or something or a vision Sunday, which sounds great. And
it is if you back it up with action, which will that's kind of what
(03:01):
the episode will be about today. So for the most part, we see churches
might present some form of vision, but then they don't turn
it into how does that play out for our church, or what decisions have
we made. We have a vision, therefore, we've we've made
some decisions, and we've decided on some actions. Totally. So
we're gonna give you four things, four sort of steps
(03:23):
to help jump start your vision process. So these things these are things you can
do on your own. Obviously, we would love to help you with it in the
context of a strategic envisioning process because we would work on
this as part of that process. But if you go, wow. You know, everything else
in our church, all things being equal, are are working pretty well, but the area
where we're really struggling is vision, then maybe there's something that you can just take
(03:44):
on on your own. Let's start with the first phase. The first
phase or first step would be a discernment phase. And we
often talk about how the strategic envisioning process is a
strategic process, but it's also a spiritual process. And we would encourage you
to take that same attitude. So maybe take some time,
take two or three weeks as a church, and intentionally put some
(04:06):
prayer times together or maybe even put a prayer team together to be
praying for the church, or maybe mobilize the whole congregation, do twenty one
days of prayer as a church and be praying for the church, but at the
same time, be collecting some data. I would really encourage you to take
advantage of the church ministry analysis. That's what I'm using with these these churches
with this denominational group, but it's included in the Healthy Churches toolkit.
(04:29):
Getting get seven days free. Go to Healthy Churches toolkit dot com. Sign up. But
this would give you real data, you know, on what's working and what's not
working in our church, what are the trends in our church, because you can make
good decisions when you have good data. If you don't have good data, then you
can't make good decisions, generally. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Man, good decisions come from good data,
(04:50):
and leaders know that. So when you're truly looking for the
best path forward, you've got to collect good information. And,
and then just use that strategically to your advantage, and it's gonna aid
in really, even all the rest of what we're gonna talk about, Scott, it's gonna
aid in that. In in how it's gonna play out month to month, over the
year, how you're gonna communicate. Yeah. Let's keep going. So
(05:12):
that was kind of phase one or part one, is to collect data
and pray through in a discernment period, seeking the Lord for the
vision. It's his vision for your church. You're just trying to understand
what he has presented to you. Mhmm. Based on your
circumstances, what you know about your community, your culture, the makeup of your church. There's
lots of factors that God has been working. God has been working on your vision
(05:33):
long before you decided to, try to tap into what he has
for you. Yeah. I'm good. Alright. So our our next part is come up with
a draft. So phase two, come up with a draft of the vision. So again,
how you go about doing this, you can choose your own way.
For us, we've we help churches put together a strategic leadership team and we
workshop through this. We talk about it and come up with this. But we're looking
(05:56):
for a description, a picture of the future. This is not easy, I
would point out. This is one of the hardest pieces. It's simple,
but it's not easy. It's simple but difficult. And so to
try to try to extract visionary language out, you know, of a
group of people that don't normally just operate in that
space. Maybe you're a church of all poets and you guys will just knock
(06:18):
it out. You're fighting over fighting over different things probably at that point I guess.
But, but most people just don't think that way, you know? I mean, going
back into Exodus and hearing how Moses describes the the
promised land and other, you know, future events, you
know, how how you might view heaven, how it's described in
scripture. Just, you know, anything. A a better picture of tomorrow.
(06:41):
Where are we going and why does it why does it sound appealing? Scott, you
talk a lot about in this, you know, being on road trips and stuff. I
mean, how would we describe where we're going on vacation this summer, you
know? And and what does that place look like if we're trying to get our
our preteens on board for spending
six days in the car with mom and dad? Like you're gonna have to make
(07:03):
that look pretty appealing for when we get to that destination. Not unlike your
church. Treat them treat them like a carload of preteens. You're gonna have to
really sell it. So Yeah. And then and then just boil that
down into something like, okay. We got a lot of stuff we've talked about. We're
totally getting it. You know, we could write a book on what this looks like.
What's, like, the what's the big thing? Where how are we really gonna gonna put
(07:25):
this package this into something that we can just say, bam. Here it is.
This is what we're doing. This is the beginning of expressing
vision into the church. Yeah. Think of it as
I mean, I I really do like the road trip analogy, just the travel analogy.
I think it's helpful. You know, if you were to think about
your vacation, wherever it is that you're going or whatever it is you like to
(07:46):
do, we all know what I like to do on vacation. We don't need to
get into that. What the the mouse that I like to go visit. But
you still worked it in. You well, I just thought as I was saying that,
I thought, what if someone doesn't know and they make some really weird assumption about
what I meant when I said we all know what I like to do.
So, anyways We're all family here. We're all family here.
(08:09):
But imagine imagine that you're getting it's it's it's the
olden days, and you're getting the brochure. You know, you're not going on the website.
You're getting a brochure. And the inside of that brochure
might have description you know, be painting the picture of different aspects of,
Like, here's what the hotel is like, and here are what the amenities are, and
here's all the activities that you can do, and all these you know,
(08:31):
here's what you're going to see. Here are some excursions you can take
around this place. Whatever it might be. Right? But
then what's what goes on the front of the brochure?
What is that that phrase or
thought or tagline or statement
that go that you only have the front of the brochure to
(08:53):
express, that is supposed to catch your attention and make you want
to understand further what's inside the brochure. That's
kind of what we're talking about. So when your vision shouldn't just be not
just be a tagline. I think this is a mistake that
churches often make. It's why sometimes churches' vision
statements read like mission statements Mhmm. Or just like a
(09:15):
tagline that they wanted to put on a t shirt or or on a bulletin
board. This is is this is a mistake. There needs to be something much deeper
beyond that. But it's okay and maybe even good or advisable to have
some short statement that encapsulates something broader, but there needs to
be something underneath that that's much deeper that fuels and drives
a picture of the future for where you're going. Yeah. Yeah.
(09:38):
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, yeah, a vision statement, you know, that we
envision reaching the world with Jesus.
Like, awesome. That's that is God's vision as well. He shares
that with you. But we gotta get a little bit
more concrete on this. You know? And what does that mean to
us? Yeah. What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do right now
(10:00):
close to home, you know, that's that's actually gonna gonna guide us into that.
So, yeah, get specific. You know, I mean, one of the something talking about,
like, travel and all that, Scott. Me and Erica,
long time ago, we're first married, went on a ski trip. And,
and on our last day skiing so, I mean, I could tell you, hey. You
should go skiing. Super fun. Yeah. Mountains
(10:22):
are beautiful. That's awesome. But on our last day, we got
up early, and we were the first ones on the lift. We got up to
the top of this trail, and they had groomed it overnight. They ran
the ran the machines. Snowcat was out there. And we got off we
got off the lift, and the sun was shining. The sky was blue, not a
cloud in the sky. It was deathly quiet.
(10:45):
Could have heard a pin drop. All you could hear was our skis
gliding over this little crunch of snow at the top,
like sparkles of, like, diamonds on the snow from the sunshine.
And just that little crunchy sound as we glided over the
snow. That is the difference between you should go skiing at
Super Fun. And let me tell you about this experience you're gonna have on the
(11:08):
top of a mountain, you know, at 12,000 feet.
But, I mean, that I could feel. I could hear the sound of that snow.
I can remember that day from twenty some odd years ago.
That's how we need to talk about where we're going in the future.
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And and you want
people want to go with you for sure. Alright. The third
(11:30):
step then is is cascade, or you could think of this
as communicate. We wanna get the vision then
from the pulpit to the parking lot. We wanna get everybody on board
with where it is we're going. This is maybe one of the other biggest
mistakes. So one one key mistake is that churches come up with a
a little, like, a motto or something that people confuse with
(11:53):
a second mission statement. The other mistake is that we communicate the
vision one time and then never again Mhmm.
Or just once a year, or we have a fresh vision annually. I know a
lot of churches that do this, especially ones that are more Pentecost. Although, they'll
say our word for the year. And I'm not dogging on that unless
you only mention the word for the year one time or people don't see how
(12:15):
that's connected to something bigger than just the year. The key is just good
communication practices. So whatever it is that you come up with,
you need to repeat it. Say it again. Describe it again. Something
that we like to do at our house when we're gonna go
on on vacation somewhere. We're doing something this summer that
we've never done before. And so we're a little nervous,
(12:37):
excited maybe, but also maybe a little nervous just because it's something we've
never done before. So we find ourselves watching YouTube videos or
reading articles online trying to prepare. We're going on a cruise. We've never been on
a cruise before, and we're all a little bit nervous about it because we don't
know. Will we get seasick? Will we not get seasick? How can we prepare for
It's ripe for disease. I can tell you that. Who knows what's gonna happen? It's
(12:58):
not big cruise either, but he doesn't be horrible.
Never been on a cruise before. What could happen? We could sink into the depths
of the ocean. We could do that. Find that Stranded? Unlikely.
Stranded also, I find unlikely. I I
don't think we're I don't think we ever go that far from
the coast of anywhere. You're within swimming distance. We can make it
(13:20):
back to shore. Goes in circles, like, right off off of Fort Lauderdale.
So I don't think we could swim to The Bahamas if we had to, so
it's alright. The water is only 12 feet deep. Exactly. You
can see the bottom, so I can almost touch. Yeah. So but the
point is we find ourselves watching videos and things just to try to
prepare, like, what should we expect. And good communication
(13:42):
for for vision should be like this. You people don't
know. You might be talking about going someplace that they haven't gone
before, and there can be understandable nerves. That's
not opposition. That's just people going, well, what's that gonna mean? What will that look
like? What will be different? What how is that gonna impact my family?
How's that gonna impact my volunteering? How's that you know, all of those things are
(14:04):
reasonable questions. And so the more you can talk about it, the more
people will be be excited about it and also,
you know, less nervous and have more ownership. So
just constant communication. Promise you,
however much you're talking about your vision, it's not, it's
not too much. There's no such thing. I don't think. Yeah. Yeah. And again, as
(14:27):
a part of this kind of cascading the vision down through it,
throughout the ministries of the church, you're not gonna be able to communicate
it clearly to how everybody plays a role if you haven't
first, you know, thought through that. So and what is the action we're putting into
place to reach our vision? And so Mhmm.
That's when it begins to make sense to, you know, our our
(14:50):
student ministry, our children's ministry area, our adult discipleship. You
know, what are we doing with our with our life groups? What's gonna change about
that? Well, you know, maybe we've decided life groups are going to be
maybe a little bit more evangelistic in the sense of or
invitational, you know? Like, hey, we've never done it like this
before, but now we want the home groups to
(15:11):
put invitations out to their neighbors close by. So not only will we have
people from the church meeting, but we wanna extend some invitations to the
neighbors. And so the people that are leading, you know, a life group, a home
group, and the people that are overseeing that ministry, Here's how our
vision works through you. Your piece of the vision is gonna be enacting
this this, you know, relatively minor change, but
(15:33):
significant nonetheless because we're working towards our vision of
really reaching our our city is gonna here's here's how it's gonna affect
you. So it's just one example of how cascading the vision
down throughout ministries, you know, might play out. But it
takes that. It takes this, like, concrete thing, this action step
or some kind of change to be able to lead into. Scott, I'm
(15:55):
segueing into phase four of being able to measure and celebrate
progress in, vision accomplishment. Yeah.
So this is our last piece here is how are we doing? If if we
never on the front end established anything that could be
measurable, again, if it's too broad, then,
then we don't know how are the progress that we're making to kinda go back
(16:19):
the the example, you know, what isn't a good vision statement
of we we envision reaching the world for Christ. Well, you could
say, hey, you could be pulling data, you know, just general data.
Oh, you know, people, 40,000,000 people came to
faith last year worldwide and you're like, hey, guys. We had a role in
that because our vision was reaching people. No. You didn't. You might not have
(16:41):
done anything for that. Right. So that's why we've gotta get more specific
and measurable so that we can you know, the second half of this was
to celebrate what we've done. Celebrate. Celebrating
wins is probably, Scott, one of the key
things that will improve momentum in the
church and increase its, I think, effectiveness,
(17:03):
in reaching things. Yeah. You know? I mean, when we can really talk about
and look at about look at what we've done and celebrate it,
golly, that's huge. Yeah. Yeah. So
let's go back briefly to measure. I think it's important that you
select we we call these things vision indicators. So in the business
world, you might call them key performance indicators, but that makes
(17:25):
every everybody's tummy hurt a little bit. So in the church, maybe
we we use the term in strategic envisioning. We call them vision indicators.
But you wanna select things that you can measure. Now some
churches will confuse this when we go through the process. They'll They'll confuse this with
a goal, like a strategic goal. We want to implement x
y z thing, or we want to build x y
(17:47):
z ministry or physical building or whatever. That's
that's a project. That's a strategy that you can implement. That's not what
I'm talking about. I'm talking about measuring outputs. What is the
result of this thing? And so you wanna select some sort
of vision indicator that is telling you or is
indicative of the fact that you are making progress towards that
(18:09):
overall goal. And you need to define what that is, and then you
need to, track it because
dreams without dashboards drift. We have to have
a number that we are tracking and that is not visible necessarily
to the whole church. And sometimes churches get nervous about this because they think, well,
our people are really gonna not respond positively to
(18:31):
a you know, these these things that we're
tracking. Well, they're not for them. They don't not the whole church doesn't need to
see your vision indicator dashboard, but
the leaders need to see this dashboard. The pastor,
keyboard members, key staff people, or or however you're
structured. Those are the folks that need to both see and monitor
(18:55):
the vision indicators so that you can then make strategic
decisions based on that ongoing data. Remember, we talked at the beginning
about how important data is for making good decisions. That's not just
true at the vision development level. That's true in the strategy and implementation
level as well. So continuing to have ongoing good
information and data that you can make decisions based off of
(19:18):
moving forward and adapt so that, hopefully, you actually make it. It'd
be like getting in your car, driving
towards your destination, not using
GPS even though you have it. I I mean, I know back there were days
when we didn't have it, but now we do. So if if you have it
and you're not using it, it's much harder to know how far away you are
(19:39):
from your destination. You have to you have to manually do that calculation. But if
you've got GPS, it's it'll tell you we're this many hours away, we're
this many miles away. Or or imagine trying to drive
without a speedometer like, trains, planes, and
automobiles. No speedometer, no
odometer, no clock. You have no idea
(20:01):
how far you might have gone. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that,
when the car is burnt to a crisp and fine trains on automobiles.
Yeah. Do you know how fast you're going?
Officer, no. No. I don't. It's burnt burnt to a crisp.
It's melted. Yeah. Radio works. So Radio works. Imagine that.
(20:22):
Funniest thing. I'm not condoning the language used in that movie.
Yeah. But it's it's like that. You know, we have churches all the time that
go, like, do you do you know how fast you were going? And they're like,
no idea. No clue. You going fast? Are you going
slow? Don't know. So, yeah.
(20:42):
Okay. Well, there we go. So there's a few things here as you consider
vision in your church. First of all, who's going to be a part of that.
Who's going to, who's going to put that together, but we need to spend some
time in prayer about it and collecting information. We've gotta get a
draft form put together so that we can begin to explain what
we see God leading us to. We need to cascade that information down
(21:03):
through our ministry so that they understand so everybody knows. Like, what's my role in
this? How how does this, work for the area that I'm
called to serve in? And then we need to put together a
plan for measuring our progress and celebrating
the things that that God is beginning to do through
our, through our vision. And that that's a good place to
(21:25):
be. We would like to celebrate with you in that too. Yeah.
So alright. Yeah. Scott?
Things are good. I know that some of you might be thinking things like, well,
you know, people are gonna people are gonna not get along with the change or
people are gonna not like if we come up with targets and goals,
but just trust the process. Trust that if you have a far
(21:47):
enough outline, go, hey. This is not a change we're looking to make over the
next five minutes, but over the next three years or five
years, people will go with you. And, and remember that
as you're communicating specific numeric
goals, the things that you should be communicating most
to to your church would be the qualitative things. Celebrate the
(22:09):
stories like AJ said. Celebrate the progress. Talk
about people's lives and life transformation. And if you're doing those
things well and regularly, people are not gonna care that, at your elder meeting,
you've got some dashboard that you're tracking that helps you make good
decisions. So when you focus on the numbers, that's what makes people
uncomfortable. But when when you start telling the stories, that's what people
(22:31):
love, and and that's what really matters at the end of the day. Every
number is a name and every name is precious to the Lord. And that's why
we do the things that we do. Yeah. I am. Yeah.
Amen. Well, there's, there's tools and resources to help you in this
area of ministry and much more in the Healthy Churches Toolkit. So go
to healthychurchestoolkit.com and sign up for your seven day free
(22:53):
trial. Explore what's going on in there. And then with your paid plus account, we
would love to do a church ministry analysis with you and, help you gain some
insight into your church. And you know what? Long as we're talking about vision, haven't
said this in a long time, but we are a nonprofit ministry supporting churches
globally. And, everything we do outside of North America is at no
fixed cost for those churches, because of generous contributions from people like
(23:15):
you and partners like your church. So go to
malforcegroup.com/donate to learn more about that. We'd love to
have you as a partner. As you hear this, coming up in very short
time, I will be heading back out of the country again. And this
summer, catching three continents with churches in three very
different situations we'll be working with churches on. We really need your support to
(23:35):
help make that happen. So go to mouthfuldrip.com/donate or contact
us today to, talk more about that, learn more about it. Love to have you
as a partner to make this ministry happen. Thanks for being with us, everybody.
Links and, more in the show notes below in your podcast app or over
on YouTube. We're glad to have you, and we'll see you again next week.
Alright. Let's turn some vision into action right now on the Church
Revitalization Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the Church
Revitalization Podcast brought to you by the Malphurs Group
team, where each week we tackle important, actionable
topics to help churches thrive. And now here's your
hosts, Scott Ball and AJ Mathieu.
(00:24):
Welcome to the Church Revitalization podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm joined by
my friend and cohost, AJ Mathieu. AJ, my friend.
Good to see you this week on the podcast. Yes. Long
time long see. I see you all the time. Everybody doesn't need to
know that. They're like, these guys, they just get together a few times a year,
record a couple episodes. Yeah. That's exactly right. No. We we see each other all
(00:47):
the time. So this is today on podcast, the impetus
for this episode is I've been doing some work
for a a network of churches and some
doing some data development research
analysis on several of their churches. Some interesting trends have
come up from that data, and I thought that it would be kind of interesting
(01:09):
to not share all their data, but maybe just share
an insight from their data and then build an episode
off of that. So here here is, here's one piece of data.
Churches that had a vision clarity score in our church
ministry analysis or churches, rather, churches that increase their
vision score by five points, outpaced their peers
(01:33):
in church attendance growth by two percentage
points each year, which is really something. So
the higher the vision score, the more your church is going
to to grow numerically, which is maybe not surprising,
but still Yeah. This is not exactly revolutionary idea. Yeah.
But but there's definitely a high correlation there between how how clear
(01:55):
your vision is and how much your church is growing.
Yeah. And, you know, if if you've seen some stagnant growth, you
know, stagnant growth, by the way, doesn't mean no growth. So you can't
just look at a percentage number and go, oh, wow. We're really growing. You know,
look at it realistically and go, alright. In four
years, we added two families. That's not necessarily a growing
(02:17):
church. Well, yeah. I I guess, got to kinda state well, and we
commonly see this. I mean, this we our body of work is in
plateaued and declining churches mostly. You know, the majority of the churches
we work with. So we see we see repetitions of
scenarios and data frequently. And so, you know,
vision falls flat for largely the same
(02:39):
reasons in these churches, and it's that it's not
baked into the behavior. It's just an
idea presented one time, sometimes more than once,
but mostly, for the most part, one time, you know, at an annual
meeting or something or a vision Sunday, which sounds great. And
it is if you back it up with action, which will that's kind of what
(03:01):
the episode will be about today. So for the most part, we see churches
might present some form of vision, but then they don't turn
it into how does that play out for our church, or what decisions have
we made. We have a vision, therefore, we've we've made
some decisions, and we've decided on some actions. Totally. So
we're gonna give you four things, four sort of steps
(03:23):
to help jump start your vision process. So these things these are things you can
do on your own. Obviously, we would love to help you with it in the
context of a strategic envisioning process because we would work on
this as part of that process. But if you go, wow. You know, everything else
in our church, all things being equal, are are working pretty well, but the area
where we're really struggling is vision, then maybe there's something that you can just take
(03:44):
on on your own. Let's start with the first phase. The first
phase or first step would be a discernment phase. And we
often talk about how the strategic envisioning process is a
strategic process, but it's also a spiritual process. And we would encourage you
to take that same attitude. So maybe take some time,
take two or three weeks as a church, and intentionally put some
(04:06):
prayer times together or maybe even put a prayer team together to be
praying for the church, or maybe mobilize the whole congregation, do twenty one
days of prayer as a church and be praying for the church, but at the
same time, be collecting some data. I would really encourage you to take
advantage of the church ministry analysis. That's what I'm using with these these churches
with this denominational group, but it's included in the Healthy Churches toolkit.
(04:29):
Getting get seven days free. Go to Healthy Churches toolkit dot com. Sign up. But
this would give you real data, you know, on what's working and what's not
working in our church, what are the trends in our church, because you can make
good decisions when you have good data. If you don't have good data, then you
can't make good decisions, generally. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Man, good decisions come from good data,
(04:50):
and leaders know that. So when you're truly looking for the
best path forward, you've got to collect good information. And,
and then just use that strategically to your advantage, and it's gonna aid
in really, even all the rest of what we're gonna talk about, Scott, it's gonna
aid in that. In in how it's gonna play out month to month, over the
year, how you're gonna communicate. Yeah. Let's keep going. So
(05:12):
that was kind of phase one or part one, is to collect data
and pray through in a discernment period, seeking the Lord for the
vision. It's his vision for your church. You're just trying to understand
what he has presented to you. Mhmm. Based on your
circumstances, what you know about your community, your culture, the makeup of your church. There's
lots of factors that God has been working. God has been working on your vision
(05:33):
long before you decided to, try to tap into what he has
for you. Yeah. I'm good. Alright. So our our next part is come up with
a draft. So phase two, come up with a draft of the vision. So again,
how you go about doing this, you can choose your own way.
For us, we've we help churches put together a strategic leadership team and we
workshop through this. We talk about it and come up with this. But we're looking
(05:56):
for a description, a picture of the future. This is not easy, I
would point out. This is one of the hardest pieces. It's simple,
but it's not easy. It's simple but difficult. And so to
try to try to extract visionary language out, you know, of a
group of people that don't normally just operate in that
space. Maybe you're a church of all poets and you guys will just knock
(06:18):
it out. You're fighting over fighting over different things probably at that point I guess.
But, but most people just don't think that way, you know? I mean, going
back into Exodus and hearing how Moses describes the the
promised land and other, you know, future events, you
know, how how you might view heaven, how it's described in
scripture. Just, you know, anything. A a better picture of tomorrow.
(06:41):
Where are we going and why does it why does it sound appealing? Scott, you
talk a lot about in this, you know, being on road trips and stuff. I
mean, how would we describe where we're going on vacation this summer, you
know? And and what does that place look like if we're trying to get our
our preteens on board for spending
six days in the car with mom and dad? Like you're gonna have to make
(07:03):
that look pretty appealing for when we get to that destination. Not unlike your
church. Treat them treat them like a carload of preteens. You're gonna have to
really sell it. So Yeah. And then and then just boil that
down into something like, okay. We got a lot of stuff we've talked about. We're
totally getting it. You know, we could write a book on what this looks like.
What's, like, the what's the big thing? Where how are we really gonna gonna put
(07:25):
this package this into something that we can just say, bam. Here it is.
This is what we're doing. This is the beginning of expressing
vision into the church. Yeah. Think of it as
I mean, I I really do like the road trip analogy, just the travel analogy.
I think it's helpful. You know, if you were to think about
your vacation, wherever it is that you're going or whatever it is you like to
(07:46):
do, we all know what I like to do on vacation. We don't need to
get into that. What the the mouse that I like to go visit. But
you still worked it in. You well, I just thought as I was saying that,
I thought, what if someone doesn't know and they make some really weird assumption about
what I meant when I said we all know what I like to do.
So, anyways We're all family here. We're all family here.
(08:09):
But imagine imagine that you're getting it's it's it's the
olden days, and you're getting the brochure. You know, you're not going on the website.
You're getting a brochure. And the inside of that brochure
might have description you know, be painting the picture of different aspects of,
Like, here's what the hotel is like, and here are what the amenities are, and
here's all the activities that you can do, and all these you know,
(08:31):
here's what you're going to see. Here are some excursions you can take
around this place. Whatever it might be. Right? But
then what's what goes on the front of the brochure?
What is that that phrase or
thought or tagline or statement
that go that you only have the front of the brochure to
(08:53):
express, that is supposed to catch your attention and make you want
to understand further what's inside the brochure. That's
kind of what we're talking about. So when your vision shouldn't just be not
just be a tagline. I think this is a mistake that
churches often make. It's why sometimes churches' vision
statements read like mission statements Mhmm. Or just like a
(09:15):
tagline that they wanted to put on a t shirt or or on a bulletin
board. This is is this is a mistake. There needs to be something much deeper
beyond that. But it's okay and maybe even good or advisable to have
some short statement that encapsulates something broader, but there needs to
be something underneath that that's much deeper that fuels and drives
a picture of the future for where you're going. Yeah. Yeah.
(09:38):
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, yeah, a vision statement, you know, that we
envision reaching the world with Jesus.
Like, awesome. That's that is God's vision as well. He shares
that with you. But we gotta get a little bit
more concrete on this. You know? And what does that mean to
us? Yeah. What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do right now
(10:00):
close to home, you know, that's that's actually gonna gonna guide us into that.
So, yeah, get specific. You know, I mean, one of the something talking about,
like, travel and all that, Scott. Me and Erica,
long time ago, we're first married, went on a ski trip. And,
and on our last day skiing so, I mean, I could tell you, hey. You
should go skiing. Super fun. Yeah. Mountains
(10:22):
are beautiful. That's awesome. But on our last day, we got
up early, and we were the first ones on the lift. We got up to
the top of this trail, and they had groomed it overnight. They ran
the ran the machines. Snowcat was out there. And we got off we
got off the lift, and the sun was shining. The sky was blue, not a
cloud in the sky. It was deathly quiet.
(10:45):
Could have heard a pin drop. All you could hear was our skis
gliding over this little crunch of snow at the top,
like sparkles of, like, diamonds on the snow from the sunshine.
And just that little crunchy sound as we glided over the
snow. That is the difference between you should go skiing at
Super Fun. And let me tell you about this experience you're gonna have on the
(11:08):
top of a mountain, you know, at 12,000 feet.
But, I mean, that I could feel. I could hear the sound of that snow.
I can remember that day from twenty some odd years ago.
That's how we need to talk about where we're going in the future.
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And and you want
people want to go with you for sure. Alright. The third
(11:30):
step then is is cascade, or you could think of this
as communicate. We wanna get the vision then
from the pulpit to the parking lot. We wanna get everybody on board
with where it is we're going. This is maybe one of the other biggest
mistakes. So one one key mistake is that churches come up with a
a little, like, a motto or something that people confuse with
(11:53):
a second mission statement. The other mistake is that we communicate the
vision one time and then never again Mhmm.
Or just once a year, or we have a fresh vision annually. I know a
lot of churches that do this, especially ones that are more Pentecost. Although, they'll
say our word for the year. And I'm not dogging on that unless
you only mention the word for the year one time or people don't see how
(12:15):
that's connected to something bigger than just the year. The key is just good
communication practices. So whatever it is that you come up with,
you need to repeat it. Say it again. Describe it again. Something
that we like to do at our house when we're gonna go
on on vacation somewhere. We're doing something this summer that
we've never done before. And so we're a little nervous,
(12:37):
excited maybe, but also maybe a little nervous just because it's something we've
never done before. So we find ourselves watching YouTube videos or
reading articles online trying to prepare. We're going on a cruise. We've never been on
a cruise before, and we're all a little bit nervous about it because we don't
know. Will we get seasick? Will we not get seasick? How can we prepare for
It's ripe for disease. I can tell you that. Who knows what's gonna happen? It's
(12:58):
not big cruise either, but he doesn't be horrible.
Never been on a cruise before. What could happen? We could sink into the depths
of the ocean. We could do that. Find that Stranded? Unlikely.
Stranded also, I find unlikely. I I
don't think we're I don't think we ever go that far from
the coast of anywhere. You're within swimming distance. We can make it
(13:20):
back to shore. Goes in circles, like, right off off of Fort Lauderdale.
So I don't think we could swim to The Bahamas if we had to, so
it's alright. The water is only 12 feet deep. Exactly. You
can see the bottom, so I can almost touch. Yeah. So but the
point is we find ourselves watching videos and things just to try to
prepare, like, what should we expect. And good communication
(13:42):
for for vision should be like this. You people don't
know. You might be talking about going someplace that they haven't gone
before, and there can be understandable nerves. That's
not opposition. That's just people going, well, what's that gonna mean? What will that look
like? What will be different? What how is that gonna impact my family?
How's that gonna impact my volunteering? How's that you know, all of those things are
(14:04):
reasonable questions. And so the more you can talk about it, the more
people will be be excited about it and also,
you know, less nervous and have more ownership. So
just constant communication. Promise you,
however much you're talking about your vision, it's not, it's
not too much. There's no such thing. I don't think. Yeah. Yeah. And again, as
(14:27):
a part of this kind of cascading the vision down through it,
throughout the ministries of the church, you're not gonna be able to communicate
it clearly to how everybody plays a role if you haven't
first, you know, thought through that. So and what is the action we're putting into
place to reach our vision? And so Mhmm.
That's when it begins to make sense to, you know, our our
(14:50):
student ministry, our children's ministry area, our adult discipleship. You
know, what are we doing with our with our life groups? What's gonna change about
that? Well, you know, maybe we've decided life groups are going to be
maybe a little bit more evangelistic in the sense of or
invitational, you know? Like, hey, we've never done it like this
before, but now we want the home groups to
(15:11):
put invitations out to their neighbors close by. So not only will we have
people from the church meeting, but we wanna extend some invitations to the
neighbors. And so the people that are leading, you know, a life group, a home
group, and the people that are overseeing that ministry, Here's how our
vision works through you. Your piece of the vision is gonna be enacting
this this, you know, relatively minor change, but
(15:33):
significant nonetheless because we're working towards our vision of
really reaching our our city is gonna here's here's how it's gonna affect
you. So it's just one example of how cascading the vision
down throughout ministries, you know, might play out. But it
takes that. It takes this, like, concrete thing, this action step
or some kind of change to be able to lead into. Scott, I'm
(15:55):
segueing into phase four of being able to measure and celebrate
progress in, vision accomplishment. Yeah.
So this is our last piece here is how are we doing? If if we
never on the front end established anything that could be
measurable, again, if it's too broad, then,
then we don't know how are the progress that we're making to kinda go back
(16:19):
the the example, you know, what isn't a good vision statement
of we we envision reaching the world for Christ. Well, you could
say, hey, you could be pulling data, you know, just general data.
Oh, you know, people, 40,000,000 people came to
faith last year worldwide and you're like, hey, guys. We had a role in
that because our vision was reaching people. No. You didn't. You might not have
(16:41):
done anything for that. Right. So that's why we've gotta get more specific
and measurable so that we can you know, the second half of this was
to celebrate what we've done. Celebrate. Celebrating
wins is probably, Scott, one of the key
things that will improve momentum in the
church and increase its, I think, effectiveness,
(17:03):
in reaching things. Yeah. You know? I mean, when we can really talk about
and look at about look at what we've done and celebrate it,
golly, that's huge. Yeah. Yeah. So
let's go back briefly to measure. I think it's important that you
select we we call these things vision indicators. So in the business
world, you might call them key performance indicators, but that makes
(17:25):
every everybody's tummy hurt a little bit. So in the church, maybe
we we use the term in strategic envisioning. We call them vision indicators.
But you wanna select things that you can measure. Now some
churches will confuse this when we go through the process. They'll They'll confuse this with
a goal, like a strategic goal. We want to implement x
y z thing, or we want to build x y
(17:47):
z ministry or physical building or whatever. That's
that's a project. That's a strategy that you can implement. That's not what
I'm talking about. I'm talking about measuring outputs. What is the
result of this thing? And so you wanna select some sort
of vision indicator that is telling you or is
indicative of the fact that you are making progress towards that
(18:09):
overall goal. And you need to define what that is, and then you
need to, track it because
dreams without dashboards drift. We have to have
a number that we are tracking and that is not visible necessarily
to the whole church. And sometimes churches get nervous about this because they think, well,
our people are really gonna not respond positively to
(18:31):
a you know, these these things that we're
tracking. Well, they're not for them. They don't not the whole church doesn't need to
see your vision indicator dashboard, but
the leaders need to see this dashboard. The pastor,
keyboard members, key staff people, or or however you're
structured. Those are the folks that need to both see and monitor
(18:55):
the vision indicators so that you can then make strategic
decisions based on that ongoing data. Remember, we talked at the beginning
about how important data is for making good decisions. That's not just
true at the vision development level. That's true in the strategy and implementation
level as well. So continuing to have ongoing good
information and data that you can make decisions based off of
(19:18):
moving forward and adapt so that, hopefully, you actually make it. It'd
be like getting in your car, driving
towards your destination, not using
GPS even though you have it. I I mean, I know back there were days
when we didn't have it, but now we do. So if if you have it
and you're not using it, it's much harder to know how far away you are
(19:39):
from your destination. You have to you have to manually do that calculation. But if
you've got GPS, it's it'll tell you we're this many hours away, we're
this many miles away. Or or imagine trying to drive
without a speedometer like, trains, planes, and
automobiles. No speedometer, no
odometer, no clock. You have no idea
(20:01):
how far you might have gone. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that,
when the car is burnt to a crisp and fine trains on automobiles.
Yeah. Do you know how fast you're going?
Officer, no. No. I don't. It's burnt burnt to a crisp.
It's melted. Yeah. Radio works. So Radio works. Imagine that.
(20:22):
Funniest thing. I'm not condoning the language used in that movie.
Yeah. But it's it's like that. You know, we have churches all the time that
go, like, do you do you know how fast you were going? And they're like,
no idea. No clue. You going fast? Are you going
slow? Don't know. So, yeah.
(20:42):
Okay. Well, there we go. So there's a few things here as you consider
vision in your church. First of all, who's going to be a part of that.
Who's going to, who's going to put that together, but we need to spend some
time in prayer about it and collecting information. We've gotta get a
draft form put together so that we can begin to explain what
we see God leading us to. We need to cascade that information down
(21:03):
through our ministry so that they understand so everybody knows. Like, what's my role in
this? How how does this, work for the area that I'm
called to serve in? And then we need to put together a
plan for measuring our progress and celebrating
the things that that God is beginning to do through
our, through our vision. And that that's a good place to
(21:25):
be. We would like to celebrate with you in that too. Yeah.
So alright. Yeah. Scott?
Things are good. I know that some of you might be thinking things like, well,
you know, people are gonna people are gonna not get along with the change or
people are gonna not like if we come up with targets and goals,
but just trust the process. Trust that if you have a far
(21:47):
enough outline, go, hey. This is not a change we're looking to make over the
next five minutes, but over the next three years or five
years, people will go with you. And, and remember that
as you're communicating specific numeric
goals, the things that you should be communicating most
to to your church would be the qualitative things. Celebrate the
(22:09):
stories like AJ said. Celebrate the progress. Talk
about people's lives and life transformation. And if you're doing those
things well and regularly, people are not gonna care that, at your elder meeting,
you've got some dashboard that you're tracking that helps you make good
decisions. So when you focus on the numbers, that's what makes people
uncomfortable. But when when you start telling the stories, that's what people
(22:31):
love, and and that's what really matters at the end of the day. Every
number is a name and every name is precious to the Lord. And that's why
we do the things that we do. Yeah. I am. Yeah.
Amen. Well, there's, there's tools and resources to help you in this
area of ministry and much more in the Healthy Churches Toolkit. So go
to healthychurchestoolkit.com and sign up for your seven day free
(22:53):
trial. Explore what's going on in there. And then with your paid plus account, we
would love to do a church ministry analysis with you and, help you gain some
insight into your church. And you know what? Long as we're talking about vision, haven't
said this in a long time, but we are a nonprofit ministry supporting churches
globally. And, everything we do outside of North America is at no
fixed cost for those churches, because of generous contributions from people like
(23:15):
you and partners like your church. So go to
malforcegroup.com/donate to learn more about that. We'd love to
have you as a partner. As you hear this, coming up in very short
time, I will be heading back out of the country again. And this
summer, catching three continents with churches in three very
different situations we'll be working with churches on. We really need your support to
(23:35):
help make that happen. So go to mouthfuldrip.com/donate or contact
us today to, talk more about that, learn more about it. Love to have you
as a partner to make this ministry happen. Thanks for being with us, everybody.
Links and, more in the show notes below in your podcast app or over
on YouTube. We're glad to have you, and we'll see you again next week.
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