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Church Vision that Becomes through Obedient Anticipation
The following post is an excerpt from God Dreams: 12 Vision Templates or Finding and Focusing your Church’s Future.
In part three of the book I walk through the 12 templates starting with a simple definition and providing a personal snapshot from my point of view as a vision consultant. Then, I explore the template biblically, providing historical and contemporary church examples and metaphors for communication. For the complete guide with team assessment questions, I recommend that you buy the book. You can also see all of 12 templates in one visual overview or visit the God Dreams resource site.
Quick Definition
Your church’s vision is to live in strategic or obedient anticipation of more clear revelation from God and with the intent to respond as He leads. For now, however, you are waiting only, posturing to hear because God has not yet given direction. You might state it as, “We will posture our lives individually and corporately to hear from God and receive His direction for our congregation.”
Personal Snapshot
For predictable reasons this template is not as familiar in my consulting experience because a church that waits doesn’t need the kind of collaborative vision journey I guide.
A few years ago I talked at length with a pastor from Mississippi. As far as I could tell from a few hours of conversation over a several week period, he was as thoughtful, smart, and godly as any pastor I have met. He had read Church Unique and was a fan of Auxano. He really wanted to go through a visioning process but kept feeling a check in his spirit that was hard to identify.
As I probed and asked questions, I began to talk him out of the process. It became clear to me that God was calling him and his church to a season of strategic waiting.
This pastor knew God was not ready to disclose the next stage of the church’s ministry and believed some shared experience must come first. I discerned that he had 100 percent clarity and that it was important not to pursue a visioning process at this time.
As I mentioned earlier in the book, I was a spiritual formation pastor before I was a church vision consultant. In some ways I still am. During my seminary days I enjoyed reading the Christian mystics in the library more than my assigned reading.
It’s this influence of mystery, the reality that God is infinitely unfathomable, that leads me to have a “mystery template” or a “template of unknowing.”
This is the heart of the obedient anticipation template: it’s okay not to know. It’s God’s universe not ours. He is in control and sometimes, by faith, we wait.
Biblical Reflections
Throughout Scripture good things happen when people wait on God. As Isaiah 40:31 says, “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
God’s Word abounds with examples of people taking an intentional pause while they wait on God’s direction. Some are prominent like Abraham who waited numerous times on God’s guidance. Other stories are told more succinctly, but it’s easy to sense their heart, such as the prophet Habakkuk, to whom the Lord said: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay” (Hab. 2:2–3).
In Acts 1:4–5, Jesus ordered His disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they were baptized in the Holy Spirit. That happened on the day of Pentecost, but the New
Testament church practiced other seasons of fasting and otherwise waiting on God before moving into action. Examples include the fasting of Acts 13:2–3 and 14:23 and the seasons of prayer implied in Acts 4:31; 10:4, 9, 30; 12:5, 12; 16:25; 22:17; and 27:29.
Starting Point Metaphors
The image above shows something like a stop sign, perhaps God’s voice indicating to wait and pause, instructing, “Don’t go into the future yet.”
Another image that depicts obedient anticipation is a door just starting to open with brightness pouring in; the wider the door opens, the more light will come through. Images of stillness come to mind like a pond on a quiet morning with a mirror-like unmoved surface.
Other images that convey this idea are kneeling in surrender to God and waiting on Him, sails or kites awaiting the wind, or an airplane on a runway.
Historical Examples
Many books on revival describe a stage where God’s people wait on God in prayer, looking for instruction and leading. Leonard Ravenhill, author of Why Revival Tarries and other books on the topic, emphasized the season of waiting as essential.
“We mistake the scaffolding for the building,” he would say. Armin Gesswein, another great preacher and writer on revival, saw seasons of waiting in prayer as foundational to revivals in the book of Acts as well as to historic revivals from Norway to New York City.
Contemporary Examples
Many in the charismatic world know of The Church on the Way, Van Nuys, California, as, for many years, the largest-attendance church in the Foursquare denomination. Few know that early in its story the vision was simply to wait on God through prayer and worship. In 1969 Jack Hayford, age thirty-five, accepted a six-month position to pastor there. At the time the congregation regularly drew fewer than twenty people, and the average age was sixty-five or higher. One day as Hayford was praying, “There descended on me an awareness that I was to stay at the church,” he says. In another season of prayer he received the strong mental impression that God would bless the church “here,” and even as attendance grew to exceed maximum seating capacity, he didn’t want to expand or relocate the small church facility. He led the congregation to pray and wait “here” at that site until God made clear what the next chapter in their vision as a church should be.
Realizing Your Own Vision
Are you ready to move away from the nine forms of generic vision to develop s vivid description of your own? God Dreams was written to accelerate team dialogue and decision making with the 12 templates. It then provides “how to” steps to select and relate your church’s top two templates. From there I walk you through how to develop a powerful and compelling vivid description. And finally, I reveal the visionary planning tool called the Horizon Storyline, to create practical short-range action steps in order to fulfill your long-range God dream.
