Envisioning healthy congregations
engaged in effective

Christian Ministry
locally AND globally.

Discerning and Implementing the Vision

• "The church leaders won't let us do this?"
• "A church is no place for video!"
• "We can't afford this?"

You have several choices as to how to hear and respond to these and similar comments.

• You could give up, but if God is trying to share a vision through you, you have not allowed God to share this vision through you.

• You could do a frontal assault and try to argue, build a caucus/coalition, or otherwise force the issue. The trouble is that you shut-out valuable insight as well as exclude the possibility of helping others share in the discovery of the vision

• You could try another way: A discovery process. Are you willing to take the risk that God is leading in this vision, but in His time? Are you ready to hear, "No, not yet?" Are you ready to demonstrate in small ways that this is an available tool - one of many - that the church could use instead of your present interest?

The Discovery Process

There are 4 areas of knowing and not knowing:

As God shares a particular vision, even use of newer technologies as tools for ministry, there are persons of the congregation who are at each of these four positions as to knowing about what the technology you want to introduce.

 

Knowing that we know

There are persons, perhaps like you, who know that these tools help a church in many areas of ministry. Encourage them to share their positive stories.

 

Knowing that we don't know

There are persons in your congregation who know "of" but, do not know (by experience) these tools and what they would offer in addition to what the church is using at the present. Provide and encourage these persons to experience these tools being used in worship experiences such as Area and Regional gatherings, other churches, national meetings.

 

Not Knowing that we don't know

There are persons of your congregation who have not reflected on using communications tools that they have used regularly - or benefitted from -- at work, in the church. They don't know that they know how these can help. Provide opportunity for them to reflect on their non-church experiences and discover what could happen in the church.

 

Not Knowing that we don't know

There are also persons in your congregation who have only their low estimation of television and movies and the garbage that is widespread on the internet to guide them when you mention video and web site to them. They don't know they don't know that these tools could to to help in reaching their grandchildren, even their children...that every use of this technology need not be questionable.

These persons need every opportunity to discover and experience these tools being used for good and for the good of the kingdom. Help these person experience these tools in churches that do not "throw in" other variables such as radically forms of worship or using the tech tools in messy and haphazard manners.

 

Each person in each of these groups needs you to share the vision that you have. Pray, demonstrate, discuss, wait on the Lord, pray more, discuss more, demonstrate again.

 

Here is how one church did it.

Area III purchased a projector to lend to churches who have not afforded themselves the opportunity to purchase one. One particular church borrowed this for a series of presentations. After that presentation, the church returned the projector to Area III for another church had requested its use. The first Sunday after that series, someone in the first church asked the pastor, "Where is our projector?" The pastor responded, "It wasn't ours. We were borrowing it." Hearing that, this person immediately contributed toward a fund to have his own church purchase one."

This would not have happened had the forming tech team allowed the projection to be more than just a tool, had they not done projection well, and had they not projected material that was valuable to those seeing it. These are elements of the demonstration part of the discovery.

 

Use Your Governance Procedures (Boards and Committee Meetings/Congregational Meetings) to Discover the Vision rather than have Up/Down votes.

• Pray for God to reveal Himself, not that you will convince
• Prepare well
• Resist Being Defensive
• Learn what Consensus Is and Is Not
• Change from Roberts Rules of Order to Democratic Rules of Order by Francis (Learn what this latter one is and help the church to change what is necessary (e.g. the constitution if necessary) so as to benefit from this better facilitator of process and discernment.

Resources for Study of Vision and Vision Casting

Leading Change, John Kotter

Visioneering, Andy Stanley

Leading Change in the Congregation, Gilbert Rendel

Raising the Roof, Alice Mann

The In-Between Church, Alice Mann

 

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