You hear ministry leaders talk all the time about what a church needs to grow. Some say it’s preaching. Some say you need a great location. Others suggest you need a vibrant ministry to children or youth.
All of those aspects are important for a healthy, growing church. But I don’t think they are what’s most important.
You start with leadership. Everything rises and falls on leadership. I see churches in great locations that struggle because of bad leadership. I see churches with great preaching struggle because of poor leadership. Leadership matters.
And leadership rests on vision.
Charisma doesn’t make a great leader. Vision does. In fact, communicating vision is your number one job as a leader. As a pastor, you need to continually clarify the vision of your church. It gets harder and harder (but more and more important) as you grow.
But where do you get vision that will propel your church forward in the new year?
You have to get vision from the Holy Spirit. God’s vision never wears out. His vision will never fail. His vision is better and grander than anything we can think up. And his vision is exactly what our churches need.
How does God communicate his vision to us? I’ve discovered through the years that God tends to share his vision with me in three stages.
1. God tells me what he’s going to do.
God starts by telling me what he wants to do through our ministry. The “what” always comes before the “how” and the “when.”
To figure out what God wants you to do, start with what God says in the Bible about what the church is supposed to do. Your church isn’t your church. It’s Jesus’ church. He founded the church, died for the church, sent his Spirit to guide the church, and someday will return for his church. He has already declared what the church is supposed to do. The purposes of the church are non-negotiable.
So start with the purposes of the church that God defines in the Bible. And then ask God to tell you how he wants to apply those purposes to your church.
2. God tells me how he’s going to do it.
Too often leaders skip this step. When God gives them a vision, they move on quickly to how they’re going to do it. They come up with their own strategy and their own plans. Then they fall on their face and come crawling back to him.
Click here to read more.
Source: Church Leaders
BCNN1 WP 