All the ingredients for a great vision

I still remember one time in fifth grade when for some occasion, we all made treats to bring in and eat for a celebration. One of the kids had made sugar cookies, except, as it turns out, he didn't have any sugar. A couple of us tried them, but nobody ate a whole one. Without all its ingredients, it just didn't work.

It turns out that I've been making and following visions without all the right ingredients, and like those cookies, it hasn't been working. At last week's CCFMT (or what I like to call Church for grown ups), we watched a presentation from the Willow Creek 2003 leadership summit by Andy Stanley on Making Vision Stick. Besides celebrating the vision and living it, you have to communicate it in the first place. While I've usually be able to communicate what I wanted to do (the action part of the vision), I've never really covered the driving forces behind the action plan. This is where I've been loosing people.

To me, the reasons behind the plan are usually below the surface of my understanding. I know its important, and if you made me think about it, after getting frustrated a bit, I'd finally be able to articulate some of the reasons. Well, as my experience has show, that's not good enough. Here are the necessary ingredients that Andy outlined:

• What is the problem or need
• Who has this need
• What is the effect we need to achieve
• How are we going to do it (The Action plan)
• Why does this problem need to be solved
• Why are we the right people to do it
• Why does it need to be done Now

My homegroup leader was sitting next to me during the presentation, so afterwards I proceeded to put him on the spot. After mumbling about the great commission and connecting people to God in response to these questions, we agreed that our group is lacking an effective vision. I think if we can find and articulate a stronger vision, then we're going to be going somewhere. Otherwise we may continue heading nowhere as we do now.