Sharing Vision

Communicating and Developing Vision

One of the most important tasks facing leaders of any organisation is to develop an understanding of where the organisation needs to be at some point in the future. Without a vision for the future, organisations are destined to live in the past, and ultimately die. "Where there is no vision, the people perish" Proverbs 29:18. For the Christian organisation such vision must come from God, but is usually initially discerned by individual leaders or small leadership groups; but to become a reality, the vision will often need to be shared and developed by a much larger group of people. This pack offers some thoughts on how that might be achieved within a Christian organisation.

A seven step approach to help a leadership group discern and develop such a vision is given in our training module "Visionary Leadership". Once the leadership have prayed through and drafted the vision, and feel comfortable that it is right, step six is to share and develop this vision with others. This is vital if the church or organisation is to truly "own" the vision for themselves. Robert Warren writes "The Holy Spirit has been at work in society making it more participative. Therefore people will not own a vision unless they have had a part in shaping it." Here are three simple checks on whether the members of your church or organisation have really adopted the vision for themselves :

1. They understand it - and can be heard explaining it to others, simply and correctly.
2. They share it - when talking about it, they use "we" rather than "the vicar/pastor".
3. They are moving towards it - suggestions and activities are consistent with the vision, rather than pointing in a different direction.

This module aims to help you achieve this level of adoption, by offering some thoughts and ideas on how the vision can be shared in a number of ways, a process for a vision sharing day with the whole church, and some suggestions for ensuring that the church is moving into the vision