Donna and I just watched a documentary film called Titan, about the ill-fated deep-sea submarine of that name in which five people lost their lives on June 18, 2023. The key figure in the story was visionary entrepreneur Stoddard Rush. As with so many great dreamers before him, Rush was brilliant, charming, passionate, fiercely devoted to the success of his project and arrogant. Seriously arrogant.
The talented, multi-disciplinary team which bought into Rush’s vision of being able to bring well-heeled tourists to the site of the wreck of the Titanic, lying over two miles down in the north Atlantic Ocean, experienced endless frustrations with trying to warn their leader about the dangers of his quest. The material of which the Titan was made showed every sign of being destined to fail – sooner or later – at the depth at which the Titanic lies, but Rush, seemingly, would not listen and could not stop until his beloved creation was crushed by forces it could not withstand.
I’m not abandoning my belief in the worth of pastoral visions. I maintain that virtually every church member has a vision (a mental picture of a preferable future) for his/her church. Certainly, every pastor has one, including those pastors who claim to not believe in church visions.
My observation is that evangelical pastor’s visions for their congregations are usually informed by Scripture and inspired by God’s Spirit. Pastors – in my view – should embrace their dreams and share them with their church’s members. Lay people want, and need, to know what their pastor is dreaming of and praying for.
But pastoral visions – especially the big, long-term, grand ones, like twenty thousand people and forty acres of land – are dangerous. They need to be handled with care.
(1) Visions can be dangerous when they discourage, rather than encourage, God’s people. Your grandiose vision for the future of your tiny and aging congregation can be overwhelming. Your members don’t believe there’s any chance that your church will ever get there and they’re pretty sure that their pastor will be perpetually disappointed with them and his ministry. Pastors shouldn’t settle for mediocrity but nor should they make their churches feel ashamed for being fifty people in an old building in a small town.
(2) Visions can be dangerous when they are embraced by willful, unspiritual people. I’m assuming that this doesn’t include the pastor (!) but let’s face it, most congregations, at one time or another, include one or more individuals who impress others with their outward appearance, talents and charm, while lacking godly Christian character and humble dependence upon God. When these folks grab ahold of an exciting vision, making it their own “get out of the way because here I come!” project, people get hurt, the congregation is wounded and the pastor’s reputation is damaged.
(3) Visions are dangerous when the willful person who is devoted to achieving them – quickly – is the pastor himself. Some pastors believe that they have the authority to make their dreams become reality by executive order. The outcome is usually disastrous, as the pastor doing this typically possesses this degree of authority only in his own mind: It was given neither by God nor by his congregation.
(4) Visions are dangerous when they are proclaimed and described by leaders who lack the strategy or the resources to see them come to fruition. Some congregations hear about the pastor’s dream often, but they have no idea – and they’re convinced that he has no idea – of how anyone is going to turn the dream into reality. Some dear folks will even feel personally responsible for figuring out how to get the pastor what he wants and feel ashamed that they have no idea how to do it.
(5) Visions are dangerous when they lead to a perpetual cynicism about pastoral leadership. A few years back I heard about a letter sent out by a denomination’s leadership that presented a brand-new, sweeping, grandiose vision for its churches. The new dream had seemingly come out of nowhere, involved a new church paradigm and included no actual plan for its accomplishment. When I heard about it, I feared that it would quickly disappear and never be heard from again. Sadly, that’s exactly what happened. And by the way, it was a great vision.
If you – as the pastor/leader – are going to present a vision which is more specific and grand than the simple, Biblical, vision of a revived church which I encourage pastors to adopt, a vision solidly grounded in the New Testament, you will do well to make sure that it has been downloaded from heaven genuinely, prayed over extensively, vetted by other church leaders carefully, and strategized thoroughly before it is presented to the congregation.
(6) Visions are dangerous when they lead to overlooking God-given opportunities to bear fruit for His glory in surprising, unexpected ways. We – especially we pastors – can become myopic about our visions. If our ability to see God’s vision for our church is faulty, we not only fail in achieving our own dreams, we miss the great things which the real Leader of the church has for us.
Returning to Stoddard Rush, the dream of getting more people involved in undersea exploration was a good dream. Rush believed that “underwater space” is both more exciting and more accessible than “outer space.” His enthusiasm was contagious, but it led to a laser-focus on getting people to one location – the wreck of the Titanic – and to get there on a dangerously hurried timetable.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
- Does your church have a vision statement which is widely known, genuinely understood and embraced by many? (Careful: Very few churches can actually answer this affirmatively.)
- Does the pastor himself have a vision for the congregation? (Let’s hear it)
- Do you think that your church is encouraged or discouraged by your official vision statement or your leadership’s unofficial vision for the congregation’s future?
- If your church has a vision, does it also have a strategy, designed to see the vision become reality?
- Has your church experienced the results of any of the dangers listed in the article? How and when did this happen? Has it recovered from them?
