A vision is owned only to the degree that it corresponds with people’s unspoken sense of purpose.
—John Koessler
Several years ago, I purchased ten shares of ibm stock at $116 per share. It seemed like a great opportunity. We were in the middle of a bull market, and the price of the stock had fallen from an alltime high of $175.
Over the next few years, however, I watched in dismay as the price of my shares inched lower and lower. Soon their value had been cut by more than half. So when I heard that Louis V. Gerstner, the former chief of RJR Nabisco, had become ceo of Big Blue, I was keenly interested in his vision for the company.
Imagine my surprise when Gerstner stated, “The last thing that ibm needs right now is a vision.”
When asked to explain, he said, “A vision is often what somebody turns to when it gets hard doing what’s required, namely, good, solid blocking and tackling. Remember, the Wizard of Oz was a vision.”
As pastor of a congregation of seventy-five, I have sometimes wondered if the last thing my church needs is vision. The blocking and tackling alone are overwhelming.
But as we have worked to formulate a long-range vision, I have learned much about vision in the small church, both the difficulties and the benefits. In the small church, talk of church vision may seem as out of place as Robert’s Rules of Order at the family dinner table. There are several reasons for this.
Limited resources. One week before we completed the grueling process of formulating a vision for Valley Chapel for the year 2000, the church’s Sunday school superintendent and financial secretary resigned. The superintendent was relocating to another community, and the financial secretary had begun a new job, making it impossible for her to continue. Since the Sunday school superintendent also taught the eighth-grade class, we also needed a new teacher.
Suddenly our grand design for the next century didn’t seem all that important. I worried about getting through the next quarter. When a small church is struggling with limited resources, the only vision it may be able to muster is the will to see beyond the next utility payment!
Family orientation. The small church, writes Anthony G. Pappas, is “a single cell of caring people. It does not exist to do, as the mid-sized-program church does. It exists to be. Its essence is not in its administrative structure, charismatic leadership, and long-range plans, as is the case in the large church.”
At the beginning of our vision formulation process, I outlined the project to one member. Her face fell. “If you expected me to say that I like the idea,” she said, “I’m afraid I can’t.”
I was surprised and disappointed. I considered her one of our more progressive members. If she hated the idea, what would everyone else think?
“As a teacher,” she explained, “I see this sort of thing all the time. It always turns out to be some administrator’s idea of what we should be doing.”
She feared that by focusing on the vision, we would no longer focus on the needs of our own people: “Maybe it’s time we started concentrating more on ourselves,” she offered.
Short-term pastors. Many small churches have learned to be wary of the “pastor’s big ideas.” When I had been pastor of Valley Chapel for seven years, an elder complimented me on a suggestion I’d made. “You almost always have good ideas,” he said, beaming.
His remark amazed me (I’d thought all my ideas were good ones!). Not long before, he had often questioned my ideas. Now, apparently, he had come to trust my judgment, but it had taken years.
The average tenure of the small-church pastor is somewhere between four and five years. Each new pastor brings a different vision. It may seem to church members that their pastors stay just long enough to stir up trouble, then leave the congregation to clean up the mess.
For small churches with a long history, this natural skepticism is augmented by a tendency to focus on the past rather than on the future. “Since the heart of the small church is neither pastor- nor paperoriented,” writes Doran McCarty, author of Leading the Small Church, “the vision of the small church often comes from its heritage. Through the generations the members have committed themselves to values and family (in this case, the family is the church family). Their vision is personal, not organizational.”
During one Sunday school class, we watched a video by futurist Joel Arthur Barker. The video began by describing the natural reluctance people have toward change. As soon as the word “change” had been uttered, a voice piped up from the back of the room: “Change? We don’t need to change. We’re fine just the way we are.”
Three key questions
Despite the above obstacles, I felt that our church would benefit from a ministry vision. During the previous eight years, the congregation had grown, and its programs had nearly doubled. This burst of expansion culminated in the completion of our new church building. Afterward I felt the church had the right to take a well-deserved rest.
In time, however, that rest began to feel more like apathy. I became convinced we needed a new challenge. I certainly did. As we sought God’s ministry vision for our church, we asked ourselves three basic questions: Who are we? Where do we live? and What is God calling us to do?
Who are we? The reason a church needs to be self-aware is practical: Once a vision has been formulated, the congregation must implement it. The church’s members may be its missionaries, but they are also its primary consumers. Members will own a vision statement only to the degree that it corresponds with their own unspoken sense of purpose.
We began the vision-formulation process by taking a good look at ourselves: What are we currently doing? Is it something we enjoy? Do we wish we were doing something different?
To find the answers, I created a questionnaire the church members filled out during Sunday school. I could have hired someone to do this, but formulating my own survey enabled me to tailor the questions to specific interests. I used a simple software program to translate the data into graphs that enabled me to visualize the survey results (rather than drown in a sea of percentages).
I hoped the questionnaire’s results would point to an overriding passion—the one thing we like to do more than anything else. It seemed to me that, if we could match that one area with a primary need in the community, we would have our ministry vision.
The questionnaire did reveal a number of clear trends. Generally speaking, people wanted to continue doing what we were already doing. Our primary strength was children’s ministry. People felt we should have more small groups, but they didn’t necessarily want to attend them. They were committed to their families but not much interested in discipleship. They wanted to hear more music in the worship services. They didn’t want to teach adults or be placed in positions of leadership.
The survey didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. But it confirmed our strengths—our children’s ministry, for example—and revealed a few holes in our ministry infrastructure—developing and discipling leaders.
Where do we live? Answering this second question forced us to look at two features of our ministry environment: demographics and lifestyle.
At first, a demographic analysis seemed daunting, especially since I had nearly flunked statistics in college! During a visit to the local library, however, I discovered The Sourcebook of Zip Code Demographics (CACI Marketing Systems, 1991) that summarizes results from the most recent census, listing the data by ZIP code. I simply had to find the category that interested me, whether age, population, income, or marital status, and look under the ZIP code of the community I was researching.
I used the same software that had worked so well with the survey. The program translated this data into graphs, and before long I had visual aids that gave me a clear demographic picture of the communities surrounding our church.
Lifestyle information was more difficult to gather. I studied back issues of American Demographics. I also asked several church members if they would interview their friends, using another questionnaire I had developed. I was pleasantly surprised when several members agreed. Many, though, took a copy of the survey home but never used it.
During a Sunday school class in which the results of the survey were being discussed, one member exclaimed, “You mean people were actually willing to talk about these things with you? I find that amazing!” Others had trouble finding willing participants. One member asked ten co-workers if they would complete the survey. She was turned down by every one.
Some did find willing subjects, however, and their answers proved revealing. Most of those who participated in the survey agreed that their lives had improved in the last ten years. Single mothers, who expressed concerns about finances and their children’s adjustment to divorce, were chief among those who disagreed. Everyone listed family as being among the top three spheres of life from which they derive satisfaction, with most ranking it as number one.
Interestingly, a majority of those who were not church attenders also ranked church among the top three priorities in their life. Friendships and family matters, particularly the needs of children, were most important. When asked to describe the kind of church they would most likely attend, the majority identified friendliness as a key factor.
The survey concluded by asking participants to draw a map of their typical day and note the time spent at each location. Most of their time was spent at work, home, or commuting between.
The survey revealed that those our church is attempting to reach feel a hunger for primary relationships but are unable to develop them because of hectic schedules. Family is a primary concern, especially if the family has been touched by divorce.
At the same time, those interviewed often made choices that worked against these priorities. For example, one woman who listed church among her top three priorities also indicated that “quality time with the family” kept her from attending church.
“Sunday is my husband’s only day off,” she explained. Yet, she went on to say that on most Sundays, her husband left home to hunt and fish.
In short, we discovered our church could address many of the needs felt by our neighbors, especially relational needs and those related to the family. But we also discovered we must take the initiative. Our neighbors would not come to us on their own.
What is God’s call? To answer this question, I formed a Team 2000 that comprised four key laypeople and myself. Our purpose was to draft a vision statement.
I chose team members who were supportive of my ministry and generally positive in their outlook. I included a member of the church’s governing board because of our tradition of strong elder rule. I chose another member because he was a fairly recent convert: he could still remember what it was like to visit our church for the first time.
Despite their interest in the project, crafting a vision statement did not come easily. After our third meeting, one member of Team 2000 said he felt frustrated because of the lengthy process. “Somehow I thought the vision would come together in just a couple of weeks,” he said. “We don’t really seem much further along than when we started.”
Then, I used the adult Sunday school class to draw the rest of the congregation into the discussion. We spent several weeks discussing the mission of the church, the results of the congregational survey, and the analysis of our community’s demographics. These classes culminated with a panel discussion during which the members of Team 2000 shared the results of their interviews with unchurched friends and neighbors. There we unveiled the vision statement, which included our overarching ministry vision: “In order to create a bridge for sharing the gospel, Valley Chapel will seek to be God’s family to the families of our community. We will design our ministries to strengthen healthy families and will seek to be an instrument of healing for hurting families by helping them to become functional.
“To that end, we envision expanding our ministries to include a family ministry center, which will provide Christ-centered educational counseling, and recreational resources for our area.”
How successful were we?
We produced a vision statement, communicated it to the congregation, and had our church departments use it to set goals.
But I wasn’t convinced the vision statement was strong enough to produce what John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene refer to as alignment: “that unparalleled spirit and enthusiasm that energizes people in companies to make the extra effort to do things right—and to do the right thing.”
So at first, I thought the payoff might come not from the vision itself but from the process that generated it. Whether or not we had uncovered God’s vision for our church, at least we had learned valuable things about ourselves and our mission.
The process itself did produce a payoff. Our demographic research, for example, forced us to come to terms with this truth: We cannot wait for the unchurched to seek us. We must think more like missionaries.
The process also reminded me of my critical role as pastor. The frustration expressed by many during the process showed that while the members expect to have a say in what happens, they also want to be led.
Now, however, there are signs our new vision is taking root.
Not long after we finished crafting our vision statement and its goals, I received a call from a member. A friend had told him of a used school bus our church could purchase for $1,000.
“John, it’s in really good shape,” he said, with excitement in his voice. “My friend was planning on buying it himself, but now he is planning to move.”
I could hardly believe my ears. Not until the year 2000 were we expecting to meet the new goal of purchasing a vehicle for our Sunday school department. The price was right.
The comment his wife made, however, excited me even more. “I thought the Lord would do something through these goals,” she said. “But I never expected him to give me the burden I have now for this ministry.”
God had indeed given us a vision.
Copyright © 1997
