Developing a compelling church vision and mission

Many churches have failed in casting good vision and have not fully understood their mission. Either that or the people have struggled to buy into the leaders vision and things have stagnated in our churches. Why is that? Would a compelling vision and mission actually lend towards the success of the church and provent apathy in our people? The following 5 keys are ways I believe we can hone in on what are mission and vision are for the church and how we can thrive as a whole family.

1. Defining your vision and mission
Every leader should have a clear mandate and we should never begin a mission without the end in mind. It’s important to realise that this does not mean you are putting God in a box or limiting Him, but rather this enhances our relationship and connection to Him while empowering you to do what you are called to do.
While vision and mission work in tandem they are of course not one and the same. A vision is what we can see in the future and a mission is what we can do to get what we want to see. Or another way of looking at it would be to defining what you want built (vision) and then defining the pathway(s) to fulfilment (mission).
Another key is learning to establish the stepping stones to get you towards your goal. Remembering that while you have people helping you to build your mandate, they probably have their own individual purposes and mandates. As a leader you will need to minister as much to their personal mandate as to their responsibility in fulfilling yours. Showing interest and empowering them in their own mandate will keep them interested in serving the big vision you have.

2. Developing the right motivation
All leadership is about people movement and not just geographically although sometimes that is the case but rather moving people developmentally. Motivation is the ability to get people to move forward. We need as leaders to figure out ways of creating incentives. In fact Bruce Wilkinson did a study of the entire scripture to see what God’s motivations were. His findings showed that in the Old Testament God motivated people primarily by reward. Secondarily by fear and ultimately or the least percentage wise by love. The interesting discovery he made was that his New Testament findings were the exact same. In other words God wired people to be motivated by reward. Especially in this generation, we as leaders need to think of different ways of motivating our people. In previous generations people were motivated by duty (“Do this because I said so”). Sometimes we can use stress, pressure, guilt or shame to try motivate our people but these are all poor motivators. We need to move from duty driven motivation to delight driven motivation. People need to have a ‘joy’ set before them that causes them to endure the cross of true discipleship. Helping people within our church fulfil their destiny is the way we can keep people motivated.

3. Mobilising and moving people
How do we actually move people? Sometimes people can feel so paralysed that it’s just easier to stay in the same place. We need to become great coaches as church leaders asking our people what they want to do. By helping them identify their personal goals, we can then make space for that to happen in our church.
When talking about movement we also need to establish a pace of movement. A church needs to be paced carefully so we can achieve the maximum output without burnout happening. This allows a church to have sustainability and scalability for the long term.

4. Generating Momentum
Every church needs to get to a place where momentum is happening. Can we create movement that sustains movement. The goal with momentum is getting to such a high speed that it can carry itself for a bit so we don’t have to push it forward all the time. When we have momentum we don’t need to micromanage anymore. Having achievements and victories build upon each other create great momentum, whereas failure upon failure can kill momentum. Leaders need to be aware of this when planning. Also remembering that we are a family and sometimes superficial momentum can actually mean we lose momentum. We want to again cultivate something that is sustainable and long term. That is why culture is so instringacly attached to positive forward momentum.

5. Multiplying leaders and ministries
One of our primary mandates from God as people is to multiply. We see in Genesis the words “Be fruitful and multiply”. Sin entered but God’s redemption plan was still in place through the likes of Abraham having a son. The mandate hasn’t changed as Jesus said “Go therefore and make disciples”. Multiplication has always been part of God’s plan! So how do we continue to raise up new ministers in our church? Perhaps we need to rethink the way we do church. Are we doing anything that shuts down gifted people in our congregation? We need to take risks as pastors and not panic when messes and mistakes happen. Parents raising children expect their children to make mistakes but it’s part and parcel of human development. For our people to develop we need to get comfortable with the idea that as we move forward mistakes will happen but the lasting fruit will make the journey worthwhile. Our goal should not just be to have children, but also to raise them!! Lets make our churches leadership incubators where people can grow up and thrive into everything God has created them to be.