There have always been visionaries, Christian and otherwise. They help the rest of us see new possibilities, invest ourselves in great dreams, and experience new realities. They’re committed to moving us on. Always something new, usually something bigger, definitely something that demands more of us than ever before.
Usually, I like them.
Visionaries were there in Bible times (Moses, Nehemiah, and Paul come to mind) and down through the centuries (Benedict, Francis, Tyndale, Carey, and Wilberforce). And they are with us today (you fill in the blanks; I’ll keep my favorites to myself). They’re ubiquitous.
Visionaries will be relieved to hear that we probably can’t get along without them. But someone needs to say (I’m not sure I have the courage) that everything in Christendom isn’t about vision, growth, innovation and entrepreneurship.
I consider myself a visionary. Throughout my pastorates, I frequently had to identify, cast, and implement vision. Now that I’ve reached senior status, perhaps I’m in a position to reflect on a blind spot that afflicts many vision-fueled leaders.
Someone (whoever he/she might be) ought to suggest that visionaries often overlook a core dimension of ministry, something we might call pastoring. That’s an old word with deep implications: it means tending sheep.
The word pastor or shepherd applies to those men and women who know people personally, care for them personally, mentor them personally, and love them personally.
Let’s not call someone a pastor who is really a CEO, an entrepreneur, or a prophet. Let’s honor these capable folk for their enormous gifts in leadership and vision-casting, but let’s reserve pastor for the folks who work with the people, walk with them on the streets, and see them in their homes. A pastor is one who can be reached and seen not by appointment but immediately in a time of personal need.
The Lord is my Visionary?
The best description of pastoring (or shepherding) is found in Psalm 23. I paraphrase: “(My shepherd) leads me beside still waters, makes me lie down in green pastures, and guides me in paths of righteousness.” That’s a different spiritual ambience than the one most of us are used to these days. Just read the line five times slowly, and your jaw relaxes, you breathe quieter, and you even start thinking for a moment.
Or brood on this description by Paul (essentially a visionary) of Timothy (a spiritual shepherd): “I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare. For everyone looks out for his own interests.”
The “vision thing,” to quote one of the George Bushes, speaks to my activist instincts. I love being the visionary when given the chance. And I love marching to the cadence set down by a great visionary who sees things I’ve never seen. Some of my best friends are visionaries.
But the “pastoring thing” speaks to aches deep inside the soul where one needs to acquire the spiritual resources of courage, wisdom, Christian dignity, grace, and patience (to name a few qualities I often lack).
Visionaries are intent on The Cause, the long-range plan, which means they focus on money, time, energy, and growth channeled in one direction. Nothing wrong with that on balance. But visionaries are prone to overlook the treasure God has placed in individuals.
Pastoring is about pausing for a moment to ask, “Are you okay? Are your doubts and fears under control? Are you hearing God speak into your life? Are you resisting evil? Is your day job, is your personal community, are your hopes and dreams in step with Jesus? Oh, by the way, what are your hopes and dreams?
Ambitious leader, wary people
Our contemporary visionaries have my unbounded admiration, my respect, and my applause. And the last thing I want to do is to slow them down. But I want them—especially our younger visionaries—to remember that pastoring is equally as significant as vision.
That doesn’t sound very “dot-com-ish.” Where is there time for pastoring in a world of start-ups, the 24/7 work week, and chasing your share of today’s prosperity? Even church leaders are driven by ambitions of quick success—if only they can drive themselves and their people a little harder, for now, for the just-around-the-corner payoff.
But there at home—away from the glare of everything that’s done so well—are plain people, old people, fearful people, poor people, deeply hurt people. And they need a pastor before they need a visionary.
One must make sure he or she knows the difference.
When a visionary doesn’t know this, the result can be congregational chaos. The visionary wants to change things; the people say they’re sick of change. The visionary appeals to the needs out there; the people can’t see past the needs in here. They stop liking each other. The leader becomes the enemy, and before you know it, two churches exist in the place of one. Not always the best kind of church growth.
The visionary opens his or her Bible and sees nothing but expansionist thinking in the exploits of the apostles and church leaders. In the haste to replicate their visions, today’s visionary may overlook the fact that alongside that first generation of church leaders were a host of men and women who, while not getting top billing, were there, nevertheless—paying the bills, offering hospitality, praying, and making necessary things happen. Countless unpublicized heroes provided the spiritual care that revolutionized the world.
I think of Onesiphorus of whom Paul says, “he often refreshed me.” And Philemon and Lydia, business-people who were growing and learning as Christ-followers with day-jobs. And Timothy’s mother and grandmother whose great contribution to the church was simply Timothy. And Barnabas, the people-encourager until he became—well, a visionary.
And Priscilla and Aquila—tentmakers and people-builders. I love the vague reference by Paul to Rufus’s mother “who has been a mother to me.” And how about Gaius, “whose hospitality I and the whole church here enjoy.” So much of ministry is ordinary people doing the daily stuff of life-making.
These people needed pastoring, just as today’s people, living in real-world pressure, need the occasional still waters, green pastures, and direction to the right paths on which to walk.
Their lives are spent in a larger world where they have to make a buck, feed children, and make sure their community is a healthy place in which to live. Pastoring helps them do that.
Not the axis of their globe
As a young pastor/visionary, I was awakened to this reality when a godly Christian laymen in my first congregation came to see me. I think I had plans for him to attend several meetings—two or three committee activities, and a planning effort or two—all in one week. I mean, whatever else could be more important than my vision to build that church into an impressive lighthouse for the gospel?
Seriously and respectfully he said to me, “Pastor, I need you to understand something. When I leave here on Sunday, I often go back home and then to work on Monday and to other things I have to do and don’t even think about the church or you for two or three days.”
I was shocked. I thought about church all the time. I assumed everyone was caught up in my vision for a larger church, a more diversified staff, a more aggressive program. And he’s telling me that he might not think about it? For two or three days at a time? Astonishing!
Then he pointed out that he was not living for the church. He was living to lead and raise his family in a godly way, living to make his job a place where his quality of work and his character reflected the Spirit of Jesus, living in a world that he wished to enjoy and in which he might experience the glory of God. And he was also working to add value in the name of Christ to people who weren’t as blessed as he was.
The church, he said, could help him do that by pastoring him. Or it could thwart him from doing that by overwhelming him with the insatiably ambitious demands of its vision.
That conversation changed me. I was falling into what may be the visionary’s great temptation: to assume that the people exist to serve my vision rather than me being there to serve them and the call God was giving them for their world.
The vision thing and the pastoring thing would have to find a better blend.
So I’m all for the visionaries. And I’m out to join them and jump on their wagons whenever possible. But I’m always hoping that the people upon whose backs the vision is built are able to hear that God’s leading along still waters, green pastures, and the right paths just might come first.
Gordon MacDonald after pastoring 38 years is a senior fellow with the Trinity Forum, Box 319, Belmont NH 03220
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