vision casting

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Review: Your church's building is a ministry tool. It should be built or renovated in order to help your specific ministry do the specific work that God has called you, specifically, to do. It should express and serve the vision of your church, which means vision is important to your building process.

Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback sent me an email this morning (alright, I'm subscribed to a newsletter and it probably wasn't even him who sent it). The first section highlighted an article by Pastor Warren called "How to share God's vision for your church."

Vision is important to your building process in two ways:

1. Building projects can put undue strain an unhealthy church. A healthy church, however, is united behind the vision for their collective ministry, and can see how a new/renovated building is going to further that vision.
2. The building project itself needs an acute vision. It's part of your over-arching vision, but let's face it: this is a big project. Just like your children's ministry has a specific vision that fits into the vision of your whole church, your building project needs specific vision.

So while Pastor Warren's "seven things" to help people understand your vision is referring to the first kind of vision, they can easily be applied to the vision behind your building project.

1. Who you are. This is the VIP factor that Thom Rainer talks about in Breakout Churches.
   
2. Where you are going. How does the new/renovated building fit into the bigger vision?
3. Why you are going there. Why can't you do that in your current space?
4. What it feels like to be going there. "To get people behind your vision, you need to communicate to them how fulfilling it will be to join God in what He's doing through your church. People are looking for significance."
5. What people can do. Help people see how they're needed.
6. How you're going to do it. Share the plan with people. Show them the floor plans and the BIM images.
7. What the rewards will be. This goes back to 1 and 2, but months into the process people will need to be reminded. When the new building opens, how will it make our ministry more effective? How will it please the Lord that we've been faithful to do a hard thing in order to expand His kingdom?

For the whole article, with Pastor Warren's comments and explanations on each, go here.