Issue 5 – Starting the New Year well

 

Dear Tom

You ask about starting the New Year well – so here are some things to focus on this year.

Go For Vision

As you know, many New Zealand churches live out their entire corporate lives in a vision wilderness – with little or no thought about where they might go in the future, or how they might get there. So they never mention vision at church, at leaders meetings, or in conversations. These churches never grow.

Vision is hugely important. Chambers 20th Century Dictionary defines vision as ‘a pleasing imaginative plan for, or anticipation of, future events.’ Bill Hybels says vision is ‘a picture of the future that produces passion in you’; and without that passion we, and our people, will never complete our journey. Warren Bennis & Burt Nanus say, ‘A vision is a target that beckons’—a picture of a dynamic future state we’ve never experienced before, a powerful prophetic voice that calls us to turn from all distractions and no exit routes so we reach the dream God has placed in our hearts.

So a vision is a compelling picture of the ‘promised land’ we see in the distance, and a bridge from our present to our future. Without that bridge, we will never reach our future—just flounder along in our present muddle.

And vision always focuses on the big picture—not the details. It’s an artist’s impression (sometimes literally!), not a photo. When one city church planned the re-development of its complex, it used a broad brush to sketch in the outline of the buildings, the extensive car park with the first cars arriving on Sunday and the first people moving towards the building entrance, a tree or two, light clouds in the sky, and birds flying overhead. One glance at the sketch told us this would be a high-energy place where large crowds came and great things happened. The picture said more than a thousand words.

However, vision dies in 30 days and that’s where the vision challenge lies – because many of our most committed people aren’t at church as regularly as they once were—so without regular vision casting, all our dreams may come to very little. If back in pastoral ministry, I’d therefore do the following.

1. I’d start every year with a major vision-casting message, using the first normal Sunday of the first school term to do so. I’d plan for this to be ‘the’ message of the year, dream about it long before preaching it, craft it for maximum impact, and deliver it with all the energy, passion and skill I could muster. And learning from Martin Luther King’s Dream Speech, with little black children joining hands with little white children, I’d put people in the message—like that struggling little family down the road coming to Jesus, and so on. I’d plan for this to be the message of the year!

2. I’d vision cast at the beginning of the other three school terms—to counteract the mission drag and loss of momentum school holidays bring. This is particularly important at the beginning of the fourth term when late winter/early spring sickness, coupled with the holidays, leads to a severe loss of momentum.

3. I’d vision cast in every service—like several friends, who take 5 minutes at every morning service to spell out, illustrate, and keep the church dream before the people so they know exactly what it’s about.

4. I’d vision cast in every message—looking for creative ways to say, ‘so that’s why at this church we do such & such’, or ‘that’s why we believe this core value is so important’, and so on.

5. I’d vision cast in some main service prayers—weaving who we are and where we’re going into the prayers, imploring God’s help to reach the promised land He’s revealed to us.

And one other thing about vision. To be any use to us, a vision has to be worth vision casting, something that grips and inspires us, crowded with people whose lives are being changed—unlike the dreary and lifeless visions we so often use today. To be any use to us, a vision must inform our minds, capture our imaginations, and constrain our wills as does the larger dream of God’s coming Kingdom.

Whatever else you do in 2005, Tom, major on vision—and lift your vision casting … enormously!

Grow Your Team

Over the course of my ministry lifetime, I’ve seen a leadership revolution—as we first discovered what leadership is, how it differs from management, and where teams fit into the scheme of things.

For no matter how gifted a senior leader may be, no church can go anywhere without a good team, and the better the team the further the church will go. In fact, based on what I’m seeing now, I fully expect some well-led churches to grow so large as to become the dominant force in their regions and communities—putting us within reach of that transformed society for which we yearn and pray.

So if we’ve not done so already, the time to start with our teams is now—and if you have to, start with just one of the most promising people you work with, then more and more, till finally you’re working with your whole team at a team level.

Start by sharing with them what this team thing looks like, where individual leaders fit into the scheme of things, and how we can grow such strong teams that not even the gates of hell can stand against us. So grow your team members both as individuals and team players—and have a team project for 2005. Many churches are doing the 40 Days of Purpose with great benefit to their churches. But to really win you also need a team project for 2005, and your best focus is probably still Maxwell’s The 17 Indisputable Laws Of Teamwork.

Get a book for each team member, take a chapter at a time, get the team to read and reflect on the chapter at home and use the Online Resource at the end of the chapter as you need it, do the homework, and talk about what it all means when you meet. Great teams, like great leaders, don’t just happen; they come about through effort and hard work.

So make 2005 the year for vision, to get you closer to your dream. Make it also the year of the team, because without a team you’ll never get there. Major on your team in 2005 – and start immediately!

Guard Your Unity

I’ve ministered through a leadership revolution—and a church revolution. Time was when we were born into a denomination and stayed there till we died. Now many change churches frequently, often because of a scrap they’ve had with the church they leave, and they claim God’s guidance for each move they make. But, as the late Brian Hathaway said repeatedly, this trend doesn’t stack up with the teaching of Jesus in John 17. Nor does it stack up with the ‘severer’ teaching of Paul in 1 Co 3:16-17 and the very strong comments in The NIV Study Bible notes on these verses.

So you go into 2005 knowing that whereas you could once take the loyalty of people for granted, with the consequent unity that brought, you cannot make that assumption now. To grow your church, you have to work hard at keeping ‘the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace’ (Eph 4:3).

If you haven’t already done so, write commitment to the unity of your church into your core values. And like Brian Hathaway in the closing years of his lifetime, speak often about passionate commitment to the unity of the local church and the challenge of Living Below With The Saints We Know (the title of Brian’s now out-of-print book). Once, we could take commitment to unity for granted—but not now; we get it only through effort and hard work. And that’s not surprising, given the struggle the Corinthian church had to maintain unity in a world remarkably like our own.

To ensure you end 2005 well, put huge energy into maturing the unity of your church—starting now!

Walk With God

2004, with its many church and family demands, was a stressful year for many of us—and we can be sure 2005 won’t be any easier. In fact, without God’s help, some of us won’t make it!

So the only way to ensure that we do make it, is to factor God into the 2005 equation—giving Him regular quality time at the time in the day when we’re most receptive to Him. We’ll look at our devotional lives in greater detail at a later time, but here are a few things to focus on in the meantime.

Having asked God’s blessing on our time with Him, we should start with reading what He has to say to us in the Book He gave us. Some of us can open the Bible and get straight into it, but others need a devotional aid or two to act like a manual choke to get us up and running; then we read the Bible a lot more meaningfully. Commenting on the fact that he wanted to know the way to heaven, Wesley said, ‘He has written it down in a book. O give me that book: At any price give me the book of God!’ Read your Bible with that kind of commitment and passion in 2005!

When we read our Bibles, we should look out for particular scenes in the passage that the Holy Spirit wants to draw to our attention—pausing and reflecting on a particular verse, holding it up this way and that way as we meditate on it. That may also be the verse we memorise for the day, building the lessons of the day into our spiritual makeup so they become part of our character. We call this reflection ‘meditation’, and it’s the spiritual discipline we practise least because many of us are always in such a hurry. But without regular and unhurried meditation (Ps 119:97), we’ll never grow to spiritual maturity.

Having read the Bible reverently, and reflected on the particular things the Holy Spirit wishes to teach us, we then bring what we’ve learned to God in prayer—prayer that may include moments of silence as God speaks to us. And we can be sure of this: if we’re to have a great 2005, we must prioritise our walk with God, with a new commitment to Bible reading, meditation and prayer. We can never perform in ministry better than our relationship with Him; so let’s make 2005 the year of our walk with God!

Keep The Coming Kingdom Always In View

Although we’re constantly hassled by the pressures of ministry, we live out our ministry days against the backdrop of the coming Kingdom of God—and remembering this is the first step to survival in ministry.

When the heat is on and pressures crowd in upon us, we’re prone to think, like the confused Jacob, that ‘Everything is against me’ (Genesis 42:36). But it isn’t. Our ministry struggles are part of a far larger movement in history – where the outcome has already been decided because our struggles are part of the unfolding Kingdom of God.

So although some take their ministries too lightly, many take them too seriously—letting the tyranny of the urgent cloud their judgment, sideline the important, and trap them into taking every setback personally. To survive in ministry, we need to put our ministries back into the hands of the God who gave them to us, upskill, and give our ministries our best shot leaving the outcome in God’s hands.

Indeed, to survive in 2005, we’ll need to be absolutely sure that God gave us this ministry of reconciliation, that trials are part of the deal as they were with Jesus’ ministry, and that with the help of the God Who called us we will certainly win.

Never let a day go by in 2005 without remembering His Kingdom is coming—and coming soon!

Starting The New Year Well!

2004 wasn’t an easy year for you, Tom—and there were times you felt like quitting. Don’t!

You know, and I know, and the church knows that God’s hand has been on your life from the day you started ministry in your first church. Don’t give your ministry away now.

Rather, give yourself to your ministry with all the enthusiasm you had the day they welcomed you into your first church. Go for vision, like you’ve never done before—and start this Sunday. Grow your team—and make your first team meeting of the year a Jordan crossing to your promised land and all the Jerichos that lie ahead of you. Give yourself to growing the unity of your church through speaking on it frequently. Take a three-legged stool approach to your devotional life—with unhurried Bible reading, thoughtful meditation, and transforming prayer. And keep the coming Kingdom constantly in view.

If you do these things, 2005 will be the best year of your ministry—and like the people in Psalm 20:4-5, we’ll all rejoice as you succeed in the ministry God has called you to.

Goodbye.

Gordon Miller
Church Growth & Development Consultant

For discussion at Leaders’ Meetings

• What steps will we take to vision cast our church’s journey to its promised land—so we get there?
• What steps will we take to grow our church teams this year—especially our main leadership team?
• What steps will we take this year to greatly strengthen the unity of our church?
• What steps will each of us take to make 2005 the year of our walk with God? Write down your answers and talk about them.
• What steps will we take to give the coming Kingdom higher profile in our church and in our lives?

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