Does Your Congregation Have a Vision?

Having is not the same as being

It is common to talk about “having” a vision for a congregation. In fact, consultants are often asked to help congregations “have” a vision statement. But a vision is not something one merely has. No matter how laminated a vision statement may be, and no matter how often it appears in an annual report, the statement itself does nothing. People do.

When vision is treated as a possession, the work can stop with the document. A congregation’s vision is better understood as an ongoing practice of becoming and acting in a direction worthy of its best efforts.

The point is

A beautifully produced statement can still lack momentum when little effort has been made to gather the wisdom and stir the imagination of those who will enact it day to day. The language may be polished, but the community has not yet found its own voice in it.

A vision comes alive when people connect who they have been, who they are, and what they feel called to become.

So what then?

The most effective visioning process brings together representatives of the whole system of a congregation or organization. Together they review the past, assess present challenges, discern deeply, and develop a shared vision with steps that participants choose to own.

Before beginning, it helps to ask: Why now? What outcomes are we seeking? What critical questions want to be addressed? Who needs to be in the room? How can we build ownership and commitment as the vision emerges?

All too often, congregations have energy for wordsmithing a vision but little energy for embodying it in daily decisions and activities. The real work is not having a vision. It is being it.