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November 2000, Page 2 (continued on page 4).
Index of articles.
Vision & direction:
index,
Catch a vision,
Why vision?
In this issue:
(November 2000)
Vicar's Letter,
Welcome Marise,
Vision,
Question.
Catching a Vision
"Where there is no vision the people perish" (Proverbs 29:18)
There is little doubt that a vision is essential nowadays to the success of an organisation: in face, the word "vision" has been hijecked from its original religious meaing and been made into a piece of management jargon. Companies conduct "brainstorming" exercises in which the staff suggest phrases which sum up their aims and their dreams for their commercial success, and these are then boiled down to make a vision statement. The vision statement is then used as a way of measuring whether what the workforce does is helping the company to get where it wants to go.
Maybe that's not what the verse in Proverbs (above) really means, because if you look it up in modern translations of the bible you'll find it comes across a bit different: "Where there is no revelation the people cast off restraint" says the New International Version fo the bible. This translation highlights the fact that the vision has to come from God - a man-made wish-list has no power to inspire the people's hearts in the long term.
How can the church learn from this verse, and from modern experience of other large organisations? We need to take secular findings with a pinch of salt, but it can't be denied that a church needs a sense of purpose as it seeks to do God's will.
Opposite and below are two vision statements from different churches - one in Newcastle-under-Lyme (Staffordshire) and one in Cambridge. The first, in an area similar to Eccleshill, says the church is about three things, and the overlapping circles mean that each of these can be helped by the others (true worship attracts others so helps the church in witness, etc.). The one from Cambridge is more wordy (I have abridged it slightly), reflecting a student congregation and a desire to see ordinary people leading the church and not leaving it just to the clergy. |
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Vision for our Church - St Andrew the Great.
* A Church committed to the Bible and to Prayer.
* A Church committed to a specific mission.
* A Church committed to mature discipleship for every member.
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How did these churches get their vision statements? The vicars did not just dream them up in the privacy of the vicarage study and then inflict them on a passive PCC! On the contrary, one of the most important things about vision is that we are all involved in deciding it, we all catch it, we all share it, and we all work to the same goal. Vision is what holds us together as a body, and, as the NIV puts it, prevents us from "casting off restraint" and each doing our own thing. Vision is the glue that makes sure that different parts of the church don't compete but cooperate.
Here at St Luke's we too should ask God if he has a plan to hold us together and make our church a body - in fact as well as in name. And, of course, he does! "I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord, "plans for good and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." It's up to us to find his plans for our church.
As I get to know Eccleshill a bit better, and as I listen to your ideas, I pray I will catch God's direction, and that I will be able to help us focus our thoughts on what he wants. The picture behind the side communion-table in church shows the Holy Spirit lighting St Luke's, that his light may be passed on to the world. We need to be asking ourselves what particularly it means for the way we conduct our church's life.
John Hartley