temptation of the urgent

Over the weekend, our staff met with about 20 leaders from our church to begin a discussion on vision. A few months prior, at a day retreat, our staff watched a seminar produced by Willow Creek Association on vision planning. Bill Hybels was the featured speaker and what he said made a lot of sense: when pastors think of “vision” they generally think of something God drops into their heads to present to the church. It become ‘top-down’ leadership with an outside vision forced on the congregation. What Hybels advised was in fact much different than the traditional model of “vision-casting”: involvement of as many interested parties as possible. In other words, one person’s vision of what God wants to do in a church does not translate very easily to the congregation. Sure, the pastor can be passionate about it, maybe even the staff is totally on board. But this type of leadership and thinking only reinforces what is the common misconception:

“Ministry is what the pastors and staff do; being led is what the members do.”

Thus the idea of mass-involvement surfaces. The theory is that the more people who are involved in the vision casting of the church (since it does not belong to the pastors, but to the members), the more active role in fulfillment of that vision those members will take.

The key concept is ownership: how easy do we find it to “own” someone else’s vision? What if we believe that God has something different for the direction of our local body? What voice do individuals have?

So, to counteract the thinking that “ministry is what pastors do”, we began the long process of inviting church members and leaders to a common table to prayerfully discuss what God wants Mirabeau Chapel to look like in five years: if we could gaze into a crystal ball and see our church in five years, what would be its hallmarks? What would the community think of us? What does it do on a regular basis? What does it offer and look like? We’re inviting all sorts of people because when people are part of the process, passion comes out and commitment to vision is fostered. Ultimately, the vision for our church is for the whole church and thus should come as a result of hearing the cumulative voice of God through the church.

But this takes time. Lots of time. Months, maybe more than a year.

This process is the opposite of urgency. What this process helps facilitate, however, is more committed vision, more involved “church-goers” and much more structured and effective ministry. The downfall in too many churches, including ours, is the rush to begin “a ministry” without thinking through the process. We get to consumed with the urgency of need that we bypass the planning that could guarantee success.

The temptation of the urgent: do and do and do and do and do as fast (and as ineffective) as one possible can.

It’s antidote? Process. Formulation. Structure. Big scary words that don’t sit well with me, except that I believe in them because of the end result: better equipping of Christians and more effective ministry.