I have never been more excited to put a tool in the hand of church leaders. God Dreams is my fourth book and I'm currently in the writing home stretch with Warren Bird, who's been an amazing collaborator. The subtitle is 12 Templates for Finding and Focusing Your Church's Future.
Here is the first of many peeks into the book. I invite you to sign up for pre-release specials before the book is published in 2016 (link below). The biggest one will be a free visual summary that you won't want to miss!
One of the chapters in God Dreams is focused on recovering the long view of visionary planning. I unpack the benefits of "thinking long" in a world obsessed with now. The long term vision tool that I debut in the book is called the Horizon Storyline. It's a visionary planning method that snaps right into the Vision Frame.
For more than a few reasons, the practice of long term thinking is hard to come by these days. Steward Brand, who is working on an interesting project called the 10,000-year clock project writes:
Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span.The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next election perspective of democracies or the distractions of personal multitasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective is needed.
What are the 12 startling reasons to practice long term thinking in ministry?
- Think long because, most likely, you will lead for a long time.
- Think long to love people beyond your lifetime.
- Think long because that’s how God reveals himself.
- Think long because God thinks generationally.
- Think long because you will live forever.
- Think long because how big you think guides how much you accomplish.
- Think long to build a ministry that will endure.
- Think long because it costs you nothing.
- Think long to master plan your disciple-making impact.
- Think long to connect people to God’s big story of redemptive history.
- Think long to focus a broader resource base.
- Think long so that God can do more than you think.
Get on the list for pre-release specials for God Dreams here.