An airline pilot with poor eyesight managed to pass his periodic vision exam by memorizing the eye chart beforehand. One year, his doctor ordered new charts that the pilot had never seen before. Not realizing it was a new chart, the pilot proceeded to recite the old chart from memory. The stunned doctor asked, āHow is it that someone with your eyesight can manage to fly, let alone land a plane?ā
āWell,ā said the pilot, āitās really not that hard. All I do is bring the plane down and when I hear my co-pilot yell, āVinceeeeeeent!ā I pull the nose up, and the plane lands perfectly each time.ā
There are some moments in life when no one should try to āwing it.ā Flying a plane is definitely one of those moments. Being able to see the sky and read the instruments (or the runway, for that matter) is necessary for keeping the plane stable. But pilots not only should have good vision to see whatās directly in front of them, they need another kind of vision: the vision to know where they are headed.
Try This! āÆ
At your leader meeting this week, develop a bold vision for your youth ministry.
Gospel Advancing Ministries need a vision as wellāa bold vision. Having a bold vision is one of the essential 7 Values of a Gospel Advancing Ministry, because a bold vision focuses everything. That is, a bold vision helps youth ministries (or any ministry) know what they are striving for, and encourages ministries to aim high for the sake of the kingdom of God. At Dare 2 Share, we believe every ministry should have a bold vision. Here are five reasons why a bold vision changes everything.
1. Clarity
Jesusā bold vision was for His disciples to go into the entire world and make new disciples, who would then make more disciples and so on. Jesus knew a vision provides a clear picture of what you are trying to accomplish. In the same way, having a bold vision for your youth ministry helps your students and leaders know exactly what you are trying to accomplish. With clarity, comes focus. And focus gives you a filter to prioritize between āgood, better and best,ā which helps ministries move from stagnant or even āgood enoughā to gospel advancing.
2. Cause
A bold vision gives people something to rally behind. Chris Selby, a youth pastor from Arkansas, prayed through and very purposefully set this bold vision for his youthĀ ministry: To have 1,380 gospel conversations and 90 professions of faith, getting 50% into disciple multiplication relationships by the end of the school year. Chris believed that a vision would change the culture of his ministry, and it did.
In a yearās time, his youth group had over 1,300 gospel conversations, 140 students placed their faith in Jesus and the group doubled in size! This bold vision gave each person within the ministry something to strive towardsātogether as a team. The results arenāt always as explosive, but, at the very least, a bold vision gives everyone something to push for, pray for and praise God for.
3. Growth and Accountability
Without a bold vision, there is no way to know if youāre hitting the mark. After all, you canāt just fire your ministry arrows and paint the target after theyāve landed. Ministries without a bold vision have nothing to aim for. Bold visions encourage growth by causing you to reach higher. For instance, within my own ministry, we made it a goal to increase the average number of students attending each week. It was intimidating to set a number that seemed so unattainable, but we took a deep breath and started to work toward achieving the goal. Our vision encouraged us to grow and kept us accountable in achieving more for Godās kingdom.
4. Evaluation and Recalibration
You canāt find out how heavy or tall something is without the proper equipment. In the same way, you canāt know how well your ministry is doing without a vision, because a vision helps you evaluate your ministry. For instance, say your vision is to see every teen within a five-mile radius of your church engaging in a gospel conversation, but your teens are only engaging in a handful of conversations, then something is amiss. You now know that there needs to be an adjustment within the ministry, which means you can recalibrate your strategy.
5. Dependence on God
When Jesus stood before His disciples and presented them with THE Cause, He was setting them up to do the impossible. After all, how could a small group of blue-collar, Jewish men take on the world? The answer: they couldnāt. But as Jesus cascaded His bold vision to His disciples, He added a vital piece of information that oftentimes goes unnoticed: āI am with you always, even to the end of the ageā (Matthew 28:20). When we do things in our own strength, we are likely to fail or get frustrated. But when we depend on Godās Spirit to lead us, everything changes. A bold vision requires us to depend on God because only He can make the impossible possible.
A truly bold ministry vision requires dependence on God. Only He can make the impossible possible. Share on XSet out to do the impossible for Christ! If you need help developing a bold vision, consider coming to a One Day training, which are happening all across the country.
There is truth in the saying āfail to plan, plan to fail.ā When you plan for the future, you are taking life seriously. This is why graduation and business books are filled with ideasĀ and strategies for having a vision for the future. By developing a bold vision, you are indirectly signaling to everyone around you that the ministry has plans to go somewhere. It also encourages you to take a sober look at the ministry and dream about where God could take it.
When we dream big and develop a bold vision, we focus on how to make gospel advancement a reality.