Due to the responses and retweets to the “Outdated Vision” post, I will follow-up with a few further thoughts.
A pastor of a prominent church responded via twitter to indicate that his church was in the 2% exception of my estimate that 98% have “outdated vision.” The truth is he may very well be in the 2%, but the immediate evidence offered doesn’t support it.
His evidence was a mission statement that didn’t pass the test. On a positive note, the mission wasn’t literally photocopied from another church. His problem is generi-vision. Leaders, please hear me: We are so used to Life in Generica, we don’t even see how unoriginal we are any more. Hence we lead with a false sense of vision.
One obstacle to seeing your own Life in Generica is focusing on accuracy. You can be accurate (and biblically so) and still generic. As we live in the generic we tend to photocopy without realizing it. That is, we tend to move toward convergence of what we know and see already rather than imagining a different, better future.
To illustrate, here is a mission statement for a church. “Our mission is to make disciples.”
Simple, biblical and accurate, right? Correct! But what does it really say about this church or this church’s future. Not much.
The key is being accurate AND specific. Vision becomes vision the more specific it becomes. We need more detail, and high definition! Look for some follow-up posts on "Leaving Generica," and remember that this problem is why I wrote Church Unique.