Alright. Let's turn some vision into action right now on the Church Revitalization Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the Church Revitalization Podcast brought to you by the Malphurs Group team, where each week we tackle important, actionable topics to help churches thrive. And now here's your hosts, Scott Ball and AJ Mathieu. Welcome to the Church Revitalization podcast. My name is Scott Ball. I'm joined by my friend and cohost, AJ Mathieu. AJ, my friend.
Good to see you this week on the podcast. Yes. Long time long see. I see you all the time. Everybody doesn't need to know that. They're like, these guys, they just get together a few times a year, record a couple episodes. Yeah. That's exactly right. No. We we see each other all the time. So this is today on podcast, the impetus for this episode is I've been doing some work for a a network of churches and some doing some data development research
analysis on several of their churches. Some interesting trends have come up from that data, and I thought that it would be kind of interesting to not share all their data, but maybe just share an insight from their data and then build an episode off of that. So here here is, here's one piece of data.
Churches that had a vision clarity score in our church ministry analysis or churches, rather, churches that increase their vision score by five points, outpaced their peers in church attendance growth by two percentage points each year, which is really something. So the higher the vision score, the more your church is going to to grow numerically, which is maybe not surprising, but still Yeah. This is not exactly revolutionary idea. Yeah.
But but there's definitely a high correlation there between how how clear your vision is and how much your church is growing. Yeah. And, you know, if if you've seen some stagnant growth, you know, stagnant growth, by the way, doesn't mean no growth. So you can't just look at a percentage number and go, oh, wow. We're really growing. You know, look at it realistically and go, alright. In four years, we added two families. That's not necessarily a growing
church. Well, yeah. I I guess, got to kinda state well, and we commonly see this. I mean, this we our body of work is in plateaued and declining churches mostly. You know, the majority of the churches we work with. So we see we see repetitions of scenarios and data frequently. And so, you know, vision falls flat for largely the same reasons in these churches, and it's that it's not
baked into the behavior. It's just an idea presented one time, sometimes more than once, but mostly, for the most part, one time, you know, at an annual meeting or something or a vision Sunday, which sounds great. And it is if you back it up with action, which will that's kind of what the episode will be about today. So for the most part, we see churches might present some form of vision, but then they don't turn it into how does that play out for our church, or what decisions have
we made. We have a vision, therefore, we've we've made some decisions, and we've decided on some actions. Totally. So we're gonna give you four things, four sort of steps to help jump start your vision process. So these things these are things you can do on your own. Obviously, we would love to help you with it in the context of a strategic envisioning process because we would work on
this as part of that process. But if you go, wow. You know, everything else in our church, all things being equal, are are working pretty well, but the area where we're really struggling is vision, then maybe there's something that you can just take on on your own. Let's start with the first phase. The first phase or first step would be a discernment phase. And we often talk about how the strategic envisioning process is a
strategic process, but it's also a spiritual process. And we would encourage you to take that same attitude. So maybe take some time, take two or three weeks as a church, and intentionally put some prayer times together or maybe even put a prayer team together to be praying for the church, or maybe mobilize the whole congregation, do twenty one days of prayer as a church and be praying for the church, but at the same time, be collecting some data. I would really encourage you to take
advantage of the church ministry analysis. That's what I'm using with these these churches with this denominational group, but it's included in the Healthy Churches toolkit. Getting get seven days free. Go to Healthy Churches toolkit dot com. Sign up. But this would give you real data, you know, on what's working and what's not working in our church, what are the trends in our church, because you can make good decisions when you have good data. If you don't have good data, then you
can't make good decisions, generally. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Man, good decisions come from good data, and leaders know that. So when you're truly looking for the best path forward, you've got to collect good information. And, and then just use that strategically to your advantage, and it's gonna aid in really, even all the rest of what we're gonna talk about, Scott, it's gonna aid in that. In in how it's gonna play out month to month, over the
year, how you're gonna communicate. Yeah. Let's keep going. So that was kind of phase one or part one, is to collect data and pray through in a discernment period, seeking the Lord for the vision. It's his vision for your church. You're just trying to understand what he has presented to you. Mhmm. Based on your circumstances, what you know about your community, your culture, the makeup of your church. There's
lots of factors that God has been working. God has been working on your vision long before you decided to, try to tap into what he has for you. Yeah. I'm good. Alright. So our our next part is come up with a draft. So phase two, come up with a draft of the vision. So again, how you go about doing this, you can choose your own way. For us, we've we help churches put together a strategic leadership team and we workshop through this. We talk about it and come up with this. But we're looking
for a description, a picture of the future. This is not easy, I would point out. This is one of the hardest pieces. It's simple, but it's not easy. It's simple but difficult. And so to try to try to extract visionary language out, you know, of a group of people that don't normally just operate in that space. Maybe you're a church of all poets and you guys will just knock it out. You're fighting over fighting over different things probably at that point I guess.
But, but most people just don't think that way, you know? I mean, going back into Exodus and hearing how Moses describes the the promised land and other, you know, future events, you know, how how you might view heaven, how it's described in scripture. Just, you know, anything. A a better picture of tomorrow. Where are we going and why does it why does it sound appealing? Scott, you
talk a lot about in this, you know, being on road trips and stuff. I mean, how would we describe where we're going on vacation this summer, you know? And and what does that place look like if we're trying to get our our preteens on board for spending six days in the car with mom and dad? Like you're gonna have to make that look pretty appealing for when we get to that destination. Not unlike your church. Treat them treat them like a carload of preteens. You're gonna have to
really sell it. So Yeah. And then and then just boil that down into something like, okay. We got a lot of stuff we've talked about. We're totally getting it. You know, we could write a book on what this looks like. What's, like, the what's the big thing? Where how are we really gonna gonna put this package this into something that we can just say, bam. Here it is. This is what we're doing. This is the beginning of expressing
vision into the church. Yeah. Think of it as I mean, I I really do like the road trip analogy, just the travel analogy. I think it's helpful. You know, if you were to think about your vacation, wherever it is that you're going or whatever it is you like to do, we all know what I like to do on vacation. We don't need to get into that. What the the mouse that I like to go visit. But
you still worked it in. You well, I just thought as I was saying that, I thought, what if someone doesn't know and they make some really weird assumption about what I meant when I said we all know what I like to do. So, anyways We're all family here. We're all family here. But imagine imagine that you're getting it's it's it's the olden days, and you're getting the brochure. You know, you're not going on the website.
You're getting a brochure. And the inside of that brochure might have description you know, be painting the picture of different aspects of, Like, here's what the hotel is like, and here are what the amenities are, and here's all the activities that you can do, and all these you know, here's what you're going to see. Here are some excursions you can take around this place. Whatever it might be. Right? But then what's what goes on the front of the brochure?
What is that that phrase or thought or tagline or statement that go that you only have the front of the brochure to express, that is supposed to catch your attention and make you want to understand further what's inside the brochure. That's kind of what we're talking about. So when your vision shouldn't just be not just be a tagline. I think this is a mistake that churches often make. It's why sometimes churches' vision
statements read like mission statements Mhmm. Or just like a tagline that they wanted to put on a t shirt or or on a bulletin board. This is is this is a mistake. There needs to be something much deeper beyond that. But it's okay and maybe even good or advisable to have some short statement that encapsulates something broader, but there needs to be something underneath that that's much deeper that fuels and drives a picture of the future for where you're going. Yeah. Yeah.
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, yeah, a vision statement, you know, that we envision reaching the world with Jesus. Like, awesome. That's that is God's vision as well. He shares that with you. But we gotta get a little bit more concrete on this. You know? And what does that mean to us? Yeah. What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do right now close to home, you know, that's that's actually gonna gonna guide us into that. So, yeah, get specific. You know, I mean, one of the something talking about,
like, travel and all that, Scott. Me and Erica, long time ago, we're first married, went on a ski trip. And, and on our last day skiing so, I mean, I could tell you, hey. You should go skiing. Super fun. Yeah. Mountains are beautiful. That's awesome. But on our last day, we got up early, and we were the first ones on the lift. We got up to the top of this trail, and they had groomed it overnight. They ran the ran the machines. Snowcat was out there. And we got off we
got off the lift, and the sun was shining. The sky was blue, not a cloud in the sky. It was deathly quiet. Could have heard a pin drop. All you could hear was our skis gliding over this little crunch of snow at the top, like sparkles of, like, diamonds on the snow from the sunshine. And just that little crunchy sound as we glided over the snow. That is the difference between you should go skiing at
Super Fun. And let me tell you about this experience you're gonna have on the top of a mountain, you know, at 12,000 feet. But, I mean, that I could feel. I could hear the sound of that snow. I can remember that day from twenty some odd years ago. That's how we need to talk about where we're going in the future. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And and you want people want to go with you for sure. Alright. The third step then is is cascade, or you could think of this
as communicate. We wanna get the vision then from the pulpit to the parking lot. We wanna get everybody on board with where it is we're going. This is maybe one of the other biggest mistakes. So one one key mistake is that churches come up with a a little, like, a motto or something that people confuse with a second mission statement. The other mistake is that we communicate the vision one time and then never again Mhmm. Or just once a year, or we have a fresh vision annually. I know a
lot of churches that do this, especially ones that are more Pentecost. Although, they'll say our word for the year. And I'm not dogging on that unless you only mention the word for the year one time or people don't see how that's connected to something bigger than just the year. The key is just good communication practices. So whatever it is that you come up with, you need to repeat it. Say it again. Describe it again. Something that we like to do at our house when we're gonna go
on on vacation somewhere. We're doing something this summer that we've never done before. And so we're a little nervous, excited maybe, but also maybe a little nervous just because it's something we've never done before. So we find ourselves watching YouTube videos or reading articles online trying to prepare. We're going on a cruise. We've never been on a cruise before, and we're all a little bit nervous about it because we don't
know. Will we get seasick? Will we not get seasick? How can we prepare for It's ripe for disease. I can tell you that. Who knows what's gonna happen? It's not big cruise either, but he doesn't be horrible. Never been on a cruise before. What could happen? We could sink into the depths of the ocean. We could do that. Find that Stranded? Unlikely. Stranded also, I find unlikely. I I don't think we're I don't think we ever go that far from
the coast of anywhere. You're within swimming distance. We can make it back to shore. Goes in circles, like, right off off of Fort Lauderdale. So I don't think we could swim to The Bahamas if we had to, so it's alright. The water is only 12 feet deep. Exactly. You can see the bottom, so I can almost touch. Yeah. So but the point is we find ourselves watching videos and things just to try to prepare, like, what should we expect. And good communication
for for vision should be like this. You people don't know. You might be talking about going someplace that they haven't gone before, and there can be understandable nerves. That's not opposition. That's just people going, well, what's that gonna mean? What will that look like? What will be different? What how is that gonna impact my family? How's that gonna impact my volunteering? How's that you know, all of those things are
reasonable questions. And so the more you can talk about it, the more people will be be excited about it and also, you know, less nervous and have more ownership. So just constant communication. Promise you, however much you're talking about your vision, it's not, it's
not too much. There's no such thing. I don't think. Yeah. Yeah. And again, as a part of this kind of cascading the vision down through it, throughout the ministries of the church, you're not gonna be able to communicate it clearly to how everybody plays a role if you haven't first, you know, thought through that. So and what is the action we're putting into place to reach our vision? And so Mhmm. That's when it begins to make sense to, you know, our our
student ministry, our children's ministry area, our adult discipleship. You know, what are we doing with our with our life groups? What's gonna change about that? Well, you know, maybe we've decided life groups are going to be maybe a little bit more evangelistic in the sense of or invitational, you know? Like, hey, we've never done it like this before, but now we want the home groups to
put invitations out to their neighbors close by. So not only will we have people from the church meeting, but we wanna extend some invitations to the neighbors. And so the people that are leading, you know, a life group, a home group, and the people that are overseeing that ministry, Here's how our
vision works through you. Your piece of the vision is gonna be enacting this this, you know, relatively minor change, but significant nonetheless because we're working towards our vision of really reaching our our city is gonna here's here's how it's gonna affect you. So it's just one example of how cascading the vision down throughout ministries, you know, might play out. But it takes that. It takes this, like, concrete thing, this action step
or some kind of change to be able to lead into. Scott, I'm segueing into phase four of being able to measure and celebrate progress in, vision accomplishment. Yeah. So this is our last piece here is how are we doing? If if we never on the front end established anything that could be measurable, again, if it's too broad, then, then we don't know how are the progress that we're making to kinda go back the the example, you know, what isn't a good vision statement
of we we envision reaching the world for Christ. Well, you could say, hey, you could be pulling data, you know, just general data. Oh, you know, people, 40,000,000 people came to faith last year worldwide and you're like, hey, guys. We had a role in that because our vision was reaching people. No. You didn't. You might not have done anything for that. Right. So that's why we've gotta get more specific and measurable so that we can you know, the second half of this was
to celebrate what we've done. Celebrate. Celebrating wins is probably, Scott, one of the key things that will improve momentum in the church and increase its, I think, effectiveness, in reaching things. Yeah. You know? I mean, when we can really talk about and look at about look at what we've done and celebrate it, golly, that's huge. Yeah. Yeah. So let's go back briefly to measure. I think it's important that you
select we we call these things vision indicators. So in the business world, you might call them key performance indicators, but that makes every everybody's tummy hurt a little bit. So in the church, maybe we we use the term in strategic envisioning. We call them vision indicators. But you wanna select things that you can measure. Now some churches will confuse this when we go through the process. They'll They'll confuse this with
a goal, like a strategic goal. We want to implement x y z thing, or we want to build x y z ministry or physical building or whatever. That's that's a project. That's a strategy that you can implement. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about measuring outputs. What is the result of this thing? And so you wanna select some sort of vision indicator that is telling you or is indicative of the fact that you are making progress towards that
overall goal. And you need to define what that is, and then you need to, track it because dreams without dashboards drift. We have to have a number that we are tracking and that is not visible necessarily to the whole church. And sometimes churches get nervous about this because they think, well, our people are really gonna not respond positively to a you know, these these things that we're
tracking. Well, they're not for them. They don't not the whole church doesn't need to see your vision indicator dashboard, but the leaders need to see this dashboard. The pastor, keyboard members, key staff people, or or however you're structured. Those are the folks that need to both see and monitor the vision indicators so that you can then make strategic decisions based on that ongoing data. Remember, we talked at the beginning
about how important data is for making good decisions. That's not just true at the vision development level. That's true in the strategy and implementation level as well. So continuing to have ongoing good information and data that you can make decisions based off of moving forward and adapt so that, hopefully, you actually make it. It'd be like getting in your car, driving towards your destination, not using GPS even though you have it. I I mean, I know back there were days
when we didn't have it, but now we do. So if if you have it and you're not using it, it's much harder to know how far away you are from your destination. You have to you have to manually do that calculation. But if you've got GPS, it's it'll tell you we're this many hours away, we're this many miles away. Or or imagine trying to drive without a speedometer like, trains, planes, and automobiles. No speedometer, no odometer, no clock. You have no idea
how far you might have gone. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that, when the car is burnt to a crisp and fine trains on automobiles. Yeah. Do you know how fast you're going? Officer, no. No. I don't. It's burnt burnt to a crisp. It's melted. Yeah. Radio works. So Radio works. Imagine that. Funniest thing. I'm not condoning the language used in that movie. Yeah. But it's it's like that. You know, we have churches all the time that
go, like, do you do you know how fast you were going? And they're like, no idea. No clue. You going fast? Are you going slow? Don't know. So, yeah. Okay. Well, there we go. So there's a few things here as you consider vision in your church. First of all, who's going to be a part of that. Who's going to, who's going to put that together, but we need to spend some time in prayer about it and collecting information. We've gotta get a draft form put together so that we can begin to explain what
we see God leading us to. We need to cascade that information down through our ministry so that they understand so everybody knows. Like, what's my role in this? How how does this, work for the area that I'm called to serve in? And then we need to put together a plan for measuring our progress and celebrating the things that that God is beginning to do through our, through our vision. And that that's a good place to be. We would like to celebrate with you in that too. Yeah.
So alright. Yeah. Scott? Things are good. I know that some of you might be thinking things like, well, you know, people are gonna people are gonna not get along with the change or people are gonna not like if we come up with targets and goals, but just trust the process. Trust that if you have a far enough outline, go, hey. This is not a change we're looking to make over the next five minutes, but over the next three years or five
years, people will go with you. And, and remember that as you're communicating specific numeric goals, the things that you should be communicating most to to your church would be the qualitative things. Celebrate the stories like AJ said. Celebrate the progress. Talk about people's lives and life transformation. And if you're doing those things well and regularly, people are not gonna care that, at your elder meeting, you've got some dashboard that you're tracking that helps you make good
decisions. So when you focus on the numbers, that's what makes people uncomfortable. But when when you start telling the stories, that's what people love, and and that's what really matters at the end of the day. Every number is a name and every name is precious to the Lord. And that's why we do the things that we do. Yeah. I am. Yeah. Amen. Well, there's, there's tools and resources to help you in this
area of ministry and much more in the Healthy Churches Toolkit. So go to healthychurchestoolkit.com and sign up for your seven day free trial. Explore what's going on in there. And then with your paid plus account, we would love to do a church ministry analysis with you and, help you gain some insight into your church. And you know what? Long as we're talking about vision, haven't said this in a long time, but we are a nonprofit ministry supporting churches
globally. And, everything we do outside of North America is at no fixed cost for those churches, because of generous contributions from people like you and partners like your church. So go to malforcegroup.com/donate to learn more about that. We'd love to have you as a partner. As you hear this, coming up in very short time, I will be heading back out of the country again. And this summer, catching three continents with churches in three very
different situations we'll be working with churches on. We really need your support to help make that happen. So go to mouthfuldrip.com/donate or contact us today to, talk more about that, learn more about it. Love to have you as a partner to make this ministry happen. Thanks for being with us, everybody. Links and, more in the show notes below in your podcast app or over on YouTube. We're glad to have you, and we'll see you again next week.