Vision Sunday

Every year when we do these pause moments, we want to outline the difference between mission and vision and a plan that there's mass confusion in churches.

This even happens in corporate environments all the time.

And if those things get fused together, it causes a lot of trouble.

Now I've done, I think I said 30 vision updates in my run here, but I think it's more like 40 when I was talking to Geneve.

So I've done a few of these and it's the same pattern for the last two plus decades.

And so I just is the same everywhere on earth if you're a Christian follower of Jesus.

So we just prayed for St. Andrew's Presbyterian.

So their mission, our mission, Calvary Baptist Mission, Hebrew and Christian Reform and WIPI, Pickering Pentecostal, for example, in Pickering, we all share the same mission to love God, love neighbor, and to get involved in the Great Commission.

We all agree with that.

We are all united in our diversity, and we're only joining the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in His mission.

And we all use different language.

We talk about fully devoted followers the way we articulate it here, but this is all the same movement.

Now, visions are different than missions.

Visions are God-given sometimes to a leader or a group of leaders or a church or a movement to accomplish a specific task.

And they have shelf lives like bread, right? It's only good for so long and then they will either be accomplished or God will give a new thing.

And so years ago I wrote this.

I want to just read this for all of us again.

Here it is.

Visions are different than mission.

Visions are God-given preferred futures that move us forward.

Visions become the lens through which we say yes and no to many really good ideas.

Many, many churches never ask the Lord of the church if he has a specific assignment for that church.

And if Jesus does give a specific assignment, then what it means is the leaders are responsible to say no to many good things we all love for the sake of what he's asked us to do, which causes frustration and sometimes hurt, but actually moves us in the right direction.

Everyone following so far? So mission is everywhere, visions are God-given, and we actually have one, and we've just seen that on the video.

And then the reason why we build plans is not because we are obsessed with strategy, though we're not against it at all.