Here's Why Pastoral Vision Is Crucial To Leading Effectively

“Have a vision that can call you through the pain of transformation.”

Eyesight. It’s something we take for granted… until we find we’re losing it.

According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, 7,000,000 people go blind every year.

7,000,000 people.

Imagine being unable to see.

Working with pastors and churches across the country, I've learned that many have a vision problem... and few are even aware. “What the heck am I doing?” pastors ask.

Now, that’s the question. The vision question.

What are you doing? What’s the reason you’re breathing? Why is your church in this community? What changes do you want to see?

It’s not arrogant to ask, and answer, these questions. It’s essential!

“Have a vision that can call you through the pain of transformation.”

One reason there's so little courage in American churches is that there’s so little vision.

If there isn't a compelling reason to invest deeply, passionately, even dangerously... the courageous won’t stay. They’ll go find a cause to champion, a wrong to right, an injustice to surmount, a greater good to establish—and go after that.

Somehow, between the church that Jesus founded and the mess we have today, pastors have assumed their job is to soothe, comfort, encourage and appease the religious.

Not so.

Pastor, your job is to make Christ-like disciples of Jesus.

People who radically transform their neighborhoods, workplaces and schools like Jesus commissioned us to.

“Have a vision that can call you through the pain of transformation.”

I heard that quote at a character development training God used to change my life over a decade ago. It acknowledges that transformation induces pain... always does. You have to choose to embrace that pain in pursuit of a vision so good, so important, so noble that it calls you through it, and into what awaits you on the other side...

Vision’s fulfillment.