This is an edited version of notes taken from the live blog of the Auxano Houston co::Lab Session #6. All coaching sessions took place at Gateway Community Church in Clear Lake, TX with Vision Coach, Will Mancini.

The Primary Objective: To define Vision Proper, explain how to cast vision and discuss how to use the Vision Frame in ongoing visioning and planning work.

Vision Proper defined

Vision Proper is the living language that anticipates and illustrates God’s better intermediate future.

The importance of living language is that the vision is always a developing Polaroid picture.

Never static. Always evolving.

Vision Proper is not a vision statement. It is a new dynamic vocabulary. It anticipates and illustrates your future.

We listened to Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream.” The full text here.

Casting vision

Vision is not to be confused with mission. Mission gives direction and integrates activity. Vision inspires sacrifice and creates energy.

There are two types of vision. Qualitative and Quantitative.

Qualitative vision comes first to the leader. God reveals a picture of the future that captures the leaders imagination and affects his heart. The leader can’t contain it and shares it with others.

Quantitative vision expresses milestones used by the leader to focus the people on measurable checkpoints. Benchmarks set to inform the people of their progress toward reaching the mountaintop.

Metaphors are used to connect people to the vision. Vision ought to be like a conk shell at the beach. When you’re not there, it can be picked up and heard.

Jesus used metaphors to communicate. As one co::Lab participant pointed out, “The language of everyday images and stories used by Jesus would have been perfectly understood by His disciples and the people around Him.”

There are six essentials to casting vision effectively.

1. Common Denominator – An emotional connection based on shared history.

2. Burning Platform – People will not be emotionally connected to your vision unless they have been previously connected to the problem the vision is addressing.

3. Golden Tomorrow – The promise of a better world in which people will want to live. How will the vision sound to people that get great satisfaction from spending Sunday’s sleeping in, reading the paper, enjoying relationships with others, having brunch and resting?

4. Wake-up Call – Creating urgency and inducing action. In contemporary terms, The Jack Bauer Factor of articulating Vision Proper. The “NOW!”

5. Mind Stretch – Find an idea, a cross functional initiative, that everyone joins together to accomplish at the same time. “I would throw away a notebook full of plans, objectives and strategies any day, in exchange for one milestone that everyone buys into.” Will Mancini

6. God Smile – Clarifying the biblical basis of the vision and showing how God’s heart is pleased.

Using the Vision Frame for ongoing visioning

Vision Proper lives within the Vision Frame – mission, values, strategy, measures. The Vision Frame provides boundaries for what will be an unpredictable journey. Changes are going to occur.

With the Vision Frame in place, team members will be able to contribute ideas and insights of their own that will complement the actions of the leader. There is room for all the leadership roles of Ephesians 4:11. The entire team has a common starting point and vocabulary adaptable to their individual gifts.

Every day brings vision-casting opportunities. In regular patterns for church at large. Every time leaders meet. When making changes such as multiplying a small group. Every time people are considering membership. Every time you introduce change. Every time you recruit a volunteer.

Leaders must help their teams to live vision daily. This one of the seven things I learned about casting vision during co::Lab, shared in my previous post. A transforming insight.

Thanks Will, Cheryl and Jessica for a great co::Lab. Enjoyed being with everyone and tracking together on vision clarity. Blessings on next steps!! –Andy Sytsma, New Life Church

We just completed the second track of Auxano’s Vision co::Lab at Gateway Community Church in Houston. This is a portion of my notes from the day long session. I wrote previously about the Lab and reasons why I’m attending here.

One of the greatest benefits to being in this learning community is the opportunity to make new friends. Church leaders participating include Wendell Hutchins, Church of Champions; Jim Martin, The River UMC; Steven Barr, LifeWorship Ministries; Matt Neely, The Watershed Church; and Andy Sytsma, New Life Church. Our lead navigator is Will Mancini, Auxano founder and visionary captain.

The primary objective for this session was to learn how to identify and develop The Kingdom Concept. The one thing your church does better than 10,000 others.

Focusing on mission is important to my current thinking and activity regarding media and technology in the church. So I leaned in close to listen.

Finding the sweet spot

Up front, we were told that getting to a single unifying purpose for any individual or organization would be hard work. Mancini said this was because Church leaders had not been trained to think that way. In the past, traditional church models influenced leaders toward the idea of doing a number of things well.

Mancini referred to the hugely successful book, The Purpose Driven Church, where Rick Warren identified five purposes of the church: worship, discipleship, fellowship, mission and ministry. Building vision and mission around those five aspects of ministry enabled churches to generally stay on course.

In today’s challenging climate of declining and plateaued churches, however, Mancini believes greater focus and clarity of purpose are needed. His main point was that God has a unique plan for every church. You just have to be willing to slow down long enough to discover it, he stressed.

Think of it, Mancini told us, as finding your organizational sweet spot; the place where your church’s unique experiences flow as a body of Christ. What your church can do better than any other church.

This thinking may sound familiar. Mancini paid homage to the book Good to Great, where Jm Collins called the idea of doing one thing better than anyone else in the world, ‘The Hedgehog Concept.’  Mancini has creatively reinterpreted the concept for a local church context.

We weren’t left hanging with theory. Mancini took us through the practical process of getting to The Kingdom Concept. We learned that it begins by considering three sets of questions, represented by three concentric circles, stacked pyramid style. Each circle, a different theme of exploration, was designed to help unpack the various expressions of your church’s uniqueness.

The following is a small sample of his questions.

Your Kingdom Concept

Circle One: Local Predicament – Answers the question, “What are the unique needs and opportunities where God has placed you?” What burning issues are alive in the public’s eye and brought to attention by the media? How would you describe the ‘atmosphere of lostness’ in your community? Does the history of your community bring to light any spiritual strongholds?

Circle Two: Collective Potential – Answers the question, “What are the unique resources and capabilities that God brings together in your church?” If a guest visited your church several times and answered the question, ‘What did you like best about that church?’ what would they say?  If your church was immediately uprooted from the community, what would people in the community feel is missing? What spiritual gifts seem to be more prominent in your church?

Circle Three: Apostolic Esprit – Answers the question, “What particular focus most energizes and animates your leadership?” What one thing bothers you most about the world? What do you tend to pray for the most? If you knew you couldn’t fail, what one thing would you pursue for God?

Getting through the entire list of questions will often take a period of weeks or months. The Kingdom Concept is found where the three circles overlap. The ‘sweet spot.’  The final expression comes, he said, when you can fill in the blank below with a clear and concise phrase…

Our church glorifies God and makes disciples by:

________________________________________________________________

We were cautioned about keeping some things out of The Kingdom Concept:

1.  Church growth projections, capital campaigns and building plans

2.  Flashy mission language or the mission language of another church

3.  Random thinking about future possibilities

Mancini likes to quote his mentor, Professor Howard Hendricks, Dallas Theological Seminary. With reference to point #3, he recalled Hendricks saying, “Can dos make it hard to know what one must do for God.”

Chapelwood United Methodist Church, under the leadership of Senior Pastor Jim Jackson, identified their ‘must do’ like this: To Embody God’s Grace As We Receive It To Those Who Need It

Mancini recounted a remarkable event to illustrate how Chapelwood knows its  people are living out their unique mission mandate.

“A number of years ago, on a Sunday, I came to Chapelwood to steal a car. A parking attendant saw me. Instead of calling the police, he invited me into the service. What I found that day was something that I couldn’t steal. I found God’s grace.” (Chapelwood Ministry Leader)

Mancini said Chapelwood’s expression of its Kingdom Concept, had the ‘OOZE Factor.’  O-rginal O-rganic Zeroed-in E-xtravagant…and S-weet.

Question: What does your church do better than 10,000 others?