My second ministry position was a lesson in the danger of being a visionary.
The church was a two or three-year-old plant when I joined the staff, and it was full of life. We held services in a coffee house. Our music was intimate and unpolished. Our preaching was relevant. We staff members had a very clear picture in our minds of the ideal congregation, and everything we did helped move church members toward that picture. We were a testimony to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s observation in Life Together, that the zealous minister “set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it.”
I only wish I had read Bonhoeffer then. He goes on in the first chapter of that wonderful little book to explain the danger of vision for a church:
The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly?He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself?
You can see where this is going. By the end of my tenure there, we had failed to make our expectations a reality. Many of the founding families left, and several of the new members had a different vision for where our congregation ought to go. I left totally disillusioned and uncertain of my calling. Fortunately Bonhoeffer speaks to this condition as well:
Only the fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight?The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both.
Although it was painful, I learned as I watched my vision for our church deteriorate, that it had been my vision, and not the Lord’s. My efforts there had been to recast the congregation in my image, to create a space in which I was perfectly comfortable. Only after losing hope in my own vision of Christian fellowship could I begin see God’s vision.
So how do you know that you’re chasing your own vision of the church, and not God’s? I’m sure there are other ways, but here are a few questions that might have helped me.
1. Do you surround yourself with a select group of church members who share your vision of ministry?
2. Do you, at the same time, find yourself annoyed with or patronizing toward other church members who do not share your vision?
3. Do you perceive constructive criticism as a threat to your influence? Are you tempted to view your ministry partners as rivals or competition?
4. Do you hold your ministry partners to unusually high standards express disappointment when they fail to perform to your liking?
5. Do you feel the need to keep close oversight of all the church’s ministries?
There was a point when my answer to all of these questions – if I were honest – would have been “yes.” Sadly, I think if you had asked others at the church to answer those questions about me, their answers would have been “yes” as well. It’s difficult to hide visionary arrogance. What Bonhoeffer calls us to do, on Jesus’ authority, I believe, is labor faithfully where we are, “even when there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty.” This requires relinquishing control in a culture that values quantifiable success nearly above all else.
It requires, too, a commitment to incisive self-reflection through which we identify these tendencies in ourselves. It may involve asking someone else – someone you can trust to be honest – whether he or she sees these tendencies in you. The fruit, in Bonhoeffer’s words again, is that “our fellowship [will] grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.”
But the risk is great. Are we willing to ask hard questions to ensure our vision comes from Christ?
