Rarely does too much vision tire a church out.
—Max De Pree
Many years ago at Herman Miller, Inc., we invented a product that revolutionized the office world—the open office. When we were ready to introduce it in 1968, however, our sales department said, “We can’t sell that. That’s a dumb product. Nobody will want that.”
To get that product to market, we had to bypass our own sales department!
One key person in the sales department, Joe Schwartz, thought the open office was a work of genius. He said, “I can sell it. This is absolutely needed.”
Joe invited facility managers from major corporations to come together for two days of meetings, and he asked them on the first day what problems they faced.
When they arrived for the second day of meetings, he restated the problems they had talked about the day before. Then he showed them how this new system could create solutions to their problems. They began to buy the product directly from him—bypassing the normal sales process. Joe is retired now, but his ability to capture a vision helped change the office furniture industry worldwide.
Most of us tend to see life the way it is, not the way it could be. It’s somehow simpler to see life as though we were looking into a mirror. Seeing reality is difficult day by day, and it’s even more difficult to see it five years from now. How can we be leaders of vision, and how can we help those in our churches become followers of that vision?
Carrying a vision
Some people have a gift for being visionary, but most of us don’t. A leader, however, doesn’t have to have a gift for vision or be the author of the vision. Vision can come from a number of sources. But the leader should be the carrier of the vision—explaining and illustrating it. Leadership, in some ways, is like teaching third grade—the significant things need to be repeated.
A demanding vision energizes people. But it’s not unusual in the church that we’ll call up somebody at the last minute and say, “Sorry we’re so late with this, but we wonder if you would like to teach the eighth grade Sunday school class? It doesn’t take much preparation. It’s not a lot of hard work. You can do it. We know you can.”
Believe me, there are better ways to help people reach their potential. It’s lazy leadership to offer people easy work. Few things in life are more insulting than to be offered an easy job.
Many years ago my wife and I attended a church that was having some special problems with a high school class. Those kids were tough to handle. The Sunday school superintendent asked a capable, experienced woman in the church to help. “Mary,” she said, “we’d like you to take this class. They’re unmanageable, and we don’t know what can be done with them.” The superintendent challenged her in a wonderful way.
Mary replied, “I’ll take the job on one condition: that you ask Max De Pree to teach it with me.” “Why don’t you ask him?” the superintendent suggested. So Mary did—and caught me completely by surprise. She impressed me when she said, “This is the toughest job in the church. I’ve agreed to do it only if you’ll help.” She created the right environment, and I accepted her challenge. We put together a program for those kids. She had a lot of good ideas, and we did a number of things that turned out beautifully.
Rarely does too much vision tire a church out. When a church is worn out, it may be that it’s not being renewed. When people work in second gear all the time, never getting into overdrive, dealing with random trivia year in and year out, they get tired. But usually we’re not worn out by tackling meaningful challenges. As a matter of fact, a leader ought to give high-performing people tougher challenges. Keep nudging them toward their potential. What makes us weary is the lack of satisfaction from work well done and well rewarded, followed by new challenges.
Developing vision
If I were the new pastor of a church, I’d start the process of developing vision by going to a few faithful area ministers and asking what they do in ministry. I’d ask for their thoughts about the church I’d been called to, about the community and what I needed to know about it.
I might invite three or four people for coffee and dessert and say, “I’ve got this thing on my mind. Give me some help. I want to run the risk of saying some foolish things, but give me your reactions.”
One of the great failures of leadership is the inability to ask for advice. Many people know a great deal, but we have to ask them to tell us what they know. Generally, people are not going to volunteer advice on how you can save your hide.
When I was young I was transferred into the sales department. One day I had lunch with a friend who had been running the New York sales office for years. As we walked back to the showroom, he took me by the arm and said, “You’re off to a good start, Max. But one thing you have to keep in mind: If you want help, you’re going to have to ask for it.”
Our culture sees asking for help as a sign of weakness, but it’s not. It’s a sign of strength.
Pastors can take several steps to improve their ability to understand and mold vision. Books and education can help, but in the game of leadership, you learn best when you’re out there actually risking something. Talking to peers who share the same kind of risks helps connect you to vision, not just to ideas. If a pastor links up with other pastors who have similar problems, they can help one another evaluate what they plan to do.
Focusing on a vision
A church’s vision should be both general and specific. There are general, overriding visions. For instance, the congregation of which I am a member has a motto: “To know Christ and to make him known.” That’s a wonderfully broad, overarching vision. We will never fully achieve it, but that’s okay.
On the other hand, significant parts of a vision should be achievable. A company may have a vision for a specific product—something that can be manufactured within a certain time. Likewise, a congregation may decide to build an orphanage in Albania or Romania, for instance—a marvelously specific vision. Part of the vision ought to be achievable, within budget and on time.
There are, thank goodness, different kinds of visions.
My wife and I recently attended an evening service at a megachurch. They were receiving into membership more than a hundred people. There was a crowd there, and the event was led by three pastors—very efficient.
Some time later, we had several people join our own church: the teenage son of our senior pastor, two people who had just returned from lifelong missionary service in Japan, two widows aged seventy-plus who had recently moved into town, and a family from Kenya. Our pastor introduced each person—including his son—talked about each one’s family background, and helped us get to know all of them.
The lesson is that there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and there’s more than one cat to be skinned. The great thing about diversity in the church is that there’s a place for all of us.
Avoiding myths about vision
There are several myths about vision.
One is that a good idea makes a vision. If risk isn’t connected with it, you probably just have an idea. Risk, like inconvenience, is a standard part of vision.
A second myth is that having a vision makes it possible to do anything. Believing such a thing can lead to serious consequences. One immediate consequence is feeling frustrated when you can’t achieve your dream. No one has the talent, the budget, or the time to do everything.
The discipline to stick with a game plan is crucial. If we stray, a big percentage of our work can be thrown away. Usually we get trapped because somebody told us we had to answer our mail within two or three days and pay attention to what everybody sends us. But just because people send it to us doesn’t mean we have to do it.
Since we can’t do everything, we need to stay focused on the vision at hand. Leaders need to understand who and what is presently important, because not everything is. Vision says: “We are going to do some things well.” But this implies that we are not going to do certain other worthy things, or we’re going to bypass other worthy people. To resolve the tension between “focused vision” and “ministry to all,” we need to acknowledge that we can’t do everything. We have to decide what it is we’re going to do.
Pastors may find this difficult because, in a sense, the parishioners are helping pay their salaries; parishioners have some right to assign work to their pastors. Even if pastors find it difficult to delegate work, there are still ways to tell people to get somebody else for the job when what they are suggesting is not on your list.
Suppose a member says, “I really want you to get behind this community prayer breakfast.” It would be good to say, “Great idea. Let’s talk about it a minute.” Then you’d ask about that person’s hopes for the prayer breakfast: “What would you like to achieve? What are your expectations?” Together you’d discuss who might be the best persons to deal with those things. Maybe you’d end up with three names—people who would be really good at it.
As long as you work with them through that process, people usually don’t feel snubbed—they feel involved. You’re helping them find the help they need to succeed.
The moral of the story is that not everybody has the right to assign work to you. Examine carefully all the well-meaning requests for help. Sticking with priorities is a choice for which we are all accountable. We can also learn to recognize the great deal of junk in our lives—junk phone calls, junk advertising, junk meetings. Junk will sap our energy.
Implementing a vision
In some organizations, people feel they have more to gain by following a visionary leader. But in other organizations, people seem to think vision will make things harder. In some churches we find many non-participators—people who like to remain anonymous. One thing that draws some people to large churches is that they can remain unknown. It’s more difficult to challenge them with a vision. They are less inclined to identify with it and take ownership of it.
But church leaders need a critical mass of people to become advocates. There’s a simple two-step path to that: First, everybody has to understand the vision. Second, they need to accept it.
When you’re making your vision understood, you start by taking everyone seriously. Treat people as adults by making both the benefits and the costs clear. We can’t have a great vision unless there are risks. A vision is going to be hard work. It’s going to cost us something. It’s going to take some time. We’re going to make mistakes.
At the second step, we can fall into a trap: We think we need to have agreement on everything. We don’t. What we need is acceptance. We adults do many things we don’t agree with but do accept. Leaders need to recognize that.
If pastors meet initial resistance to their ideas, they need to find out if there’s anyone in the church who feels a compelling need for change. If the general attitude of the congregation is that their programs are fine, they’re doing okay, maybe working on a vision is not the thing to do. It’s hard to effect change in an organization unless people feel a compelling need for change. If you’re a pastor who works best out of vision, perhaps you should not accept an invitation to a church that has no soil for change. Find a church that relates to your strengths, interests, and goals.
But if you’re already in a church with a long history, it’s still possible to cultivate the soil, turning it over a little bit—almost creating a desire for change. You start by asking questions that help people see different horizons. What would people like? What do they wish for? What legacy do they desire to leave? Instead of telling them, you simply ask enough questions so they’ll discover for themselves that they have some problems. If you get enough signals that there’s room for something more, then, with a lot of participation, you can start to develop a vision.
When implementing a vision, leaders can make several critical mistakes. One is not being vulnerable. If I feel my position as a leader means I don’t need help, it’s going to be difficult for me to implement a vision. If we protect ourselves because we’re afraid of the creative person or afraid of change and innovation, we can’t really lead.
Another problem arises when we can’t separate our egos from an issue. If I identify too strongly with a project or a church, I can’t be objective about it. Everything that comes up touches who I am, affirming or threatening me. We have to learn how to separate ourselves from the issues of the church; some things happen that don’t involve us.
But even good leaders with good visions sometimes fail. Sometimes nothing can help a vision. When the leader or the people lack resources or are untrained or incompetent, then they’re not the right people to implement that vision. Sometimes the organization’s structure cannot contain the vision, and it has to go outside the organization.
Right-sizing a vision
My brother-in-law came off an Iowa farm and went to seminary when he was around thirty-five. He pastored middle-class Protestant churches until he moved to Bushwick, New York, where he pastored an inner-city church for many years. Then he retired and moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he bought a church building in the heart of a poor black community.
The primary thrust of this church is the after-school program for the children of the neighborhood. More than 100 children show up. He recruits people to teach sewing, accounting, remedial reading—whatever is needed. Then in the summer, he leads an all-day, six-week course concluding with graduation exercises. He’s doing all this—even the janitorial work—though he’s now in his seventies.
But every Sunday he holds a service and preaches a sermon. At the most, eight people attend. One day somebody asked him, “Isn’t that kind of hard, preaching to only eight people?”
“Nothing hard about that,” he said. “The Lord called me to preach. He never said anything about how many.”
It takes a lot of maturity and grace to have that sense of calling and that kind of vision. Sometimes those of us with big vision can act as though we’re on the moral high ground, while everyone without a vision is teetering on the edge. Yet for a pastor keeping forty families together in South Dakota, perhaps the most wonderful vision is doing just that. Great visions come in all sizes.
Copyright © 1997
