Vision Casting

This 2024 report claims that "every state is number one in something." For instance, did you know that:

• Colorado tops the list as the most physically active state.
• Idaho ranks as the number one state for home ownership thanks to affordability.
• Kansas has the least number of poor roadways with less than 1% of roads considered unserviceable.
• Louisiana has the highest number of unmarried adults and thus is the best dating state.
• Michigan has the most golf courses and country clubs per capita.
• When it comes to high school graduations, Nebraska leads with an incredible 93.7% of students graduating.
• Pennsylvania has the most licensed hunters per capita, with 20 hunters per square mile.
• You can binge watch your favorite shows much faster in Tennessee, with internet speeds 50 times quicker than the national average.

You can see the results, best and worst for all 50 states here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This a fun way to set up a sermon on church vision (“our church's greatest strengths”) or spiritual gifts.

Most people don't know about Samuel Pierpont Langley. In the early 20th century, many people were pursuing the dream of flight. And Samuel Pierpont Langley had, what we assume, to be the recipe for success. Langley was given $50,000 by the War Department to figure out this flying machine. Money was no problem. He held a seat at Harvard and worked at the Smithsonian and was extremely well-connected; he knew all the big minds of the day. He hired the best minds money could find and the market conditions were fantastic. The New York Times followed him around everywhere, and everyone was rooting for Langley. Then how come we've never heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley?

A few hundred miles away in Dayton, Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright, had none of what we consider to be the recipe for success. They had no money; they paid for their dream with the proceeds from their bicycle shop. Not a single person on the Wright brothers' team had a college education, not even Orville or Wilbur. And The New York Times followed them around nowhere.

The difference was, Orville and Wilbur were driven by a cause, by a purpose, by a belief. They believed that if they could figure out this flying machine, it would change the course of the world. Samuel Pierpont Langley was different. He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be famous. He was in pursuit of the result. He was in pursuit of the riches. And lo and behold, look what happened. The people who believed in the Wright brothers' dream worked with them with blood and sweat and tears. The others just worked for the paycheck. They tell stories of how every time the Wright brothers went out, they would have to take five sets of parts, because that's how many times they would crash before supper.

And, eventually, on December 17th, 1903, the Wright brothers took flight, and no one was there to even experience it. We found out about it a few days later. And further proof that Langley was motivated by the wrong thing: the day the Wright brothers took flight, he quit. He could have said, "That's an amazing discovery, guys, and I will improve upon your technology," but he didn't. He wasn't first, he didn't get rich, he didn't get famous, so he quit.

The year was 2012, and everything seemed to be going wrong for Best Buy. The CEO had just resigned after admitting to an improper relationship with a female employee. Employee engagement seemed to be at an all-time low. And Best Buy stores were bleeding money--as customers came to test products they wanted, only to buy them online from Amazon at a cheaper price. Best Buy was dying a slow death.

But fast forward to today, and the company is thriving: The stock price is surging and workers seem happier than ever. So, how did Best Buy do it? Hubert Joly, the new CEO, focused on people and practiced humility. In his first months on the job, Joly did something great: He visited Best Buy stores (and even worked at a store for a week), giving him the chance to speak directly to front line employees.

Based on their feedback, Joly:

Fixed broken systems

Restored a beloved employee discount program

Invested in employee training

The measures seem to have worked. A survey showed 78 percent of employees would recommend working at Best Buy to a friend, and Joly enjoys a 92 percent employee approval rate.

Justin Bariso, “Amazon Almost Killed Best Buy. Then, Best Buy Did Something Completely Brilliant” Inc.com (3-4-19)

In 1836, the fledgling Washington National Monument Society announced they had chosen Robert Mills' plans for the soon-to-be-constructed monument to the nation's first president. Mills had slaved for months over the elaborate drawings, and he had dared to dream big—a granite obelisk soaring 555 feet high. It would be no less than the tallest structure in the world.

But the funds didn't come in as fast as the society had hoped. Construction wasn't able to begin until a full twelve years later. Then the engineers discovered the ground at the site was too soft to support the weight of the huge monument, so they had to start over farther north.

Work proceeded smoothly for six years, and major figures began donating marble to the project. But in 1854, when Pope Pius IX donated a marble block from the Temple of Concord, a group of saboteurs stole the block and destroyed it. The incident shocked the public, and donations nearly stopped.

Then members of the Know-Nothing political party broke into the society's offices and actually seized possession of the monument. Vandals continued to deface the monument, and construction finally stopped dead in 1855.

What remained of Mills's soaring dream was a squat, ugly, 150-foot stump. Robert Mills died that year.

But his vision would not die. 25 years after his death, 50 years after Mills' dream began, work resumed. Four years later a cast-aluminum cap was placed over the granite tip. Today Mills' monument stands as the tallest masonry structure in the world, and last year, over a million people came to see the realization of his dream.

Vision is merely hope with a blueprint.

Find the person in your church who has a real burden for a specific task, and then let him do it.

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.

The Tyranny of the Rigid

On May 24, 1965, a thirteen-and-a-half-foot boat quietly slipped out of the marina at Falmouth, Massachusetts. Its destination? England. It would be the smallest craft ever to make the voyage. Its name? Tinkerbelle. Its pilot? Robert Manry, a copy editor for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, who felt ten years at the desk was enough boredom for a while, so he took a leave of absence to fulfill his secret dream.

Manry was afraid, not of the ocean, but of all those people who would try to talk him out of the trip. So he didn't share it with many, just some relatives and especially his wife, Virginia. She was his greatest source of support.

The trip? Anything but pleasant. He spent sleepless nights trying to cross shipping lanes without getting run down and sunk. Weeks at sea caused his food to become tasteless. Loneliness, that age-old monster of the deep, led to terrifying hallucinations. His rudder broke three times. Storms swept him overboard, and had it not been for the rope he had knotted around his waist, he would never have been able to pull himself back on board. Finally, after seventy-eight days alone at sea, he sailed into Falmouth, England.

During those nights at the tiller, he had fantasized about what he would do once he arrived. He expected simply to check into a hotel, eat dinner alone, then the next morning see if, perhaps, the Associated Press might be interested in his story. Was he in for a surprise!

Word of his approach had spread far and wide. To his amazement, three hundred vessels, with horns blasting, escorted Tinkerbelle into port. Forty thousand people stood screaming and cheering him to shore. Robert Manry, copy editor turned dreamer, became an overnight hero.

His story has been told around the world. But Robert couldn't have done it alone. Standing on the dock was an even greater hero: Virginia. Refusing to be rigid when Robert's dream was taking shape, she allowed him freedom to pursue his dream.

Ministries cannot become great without dreamers who weary of only maintenance year in, year out. We need more Roberts who have the creativity and tenacity to break with boredom and try the unusual. But even more, we need the Virginias who won't allow rigidity to rule the roost.