I was having a conversation with someone at a Shed Night recently regarding the vision for the Men’s Shed.  He responded by talking about the time he was involved in ministry and how the most difficult challenge was to come up with something different each time and the amount of time and effort went into setting up and pulling down for each event.  It reminded me of an interview with John Ortberg I once heard on the subject of leadership.  He was asked the question, “How does a leader lead well?”  He responded by referring to a book written by Dallas Willard called Living in the Vision of God.  This is what he said:

“Any great movement of God begins with a vision, only it’s not a vision like anybody talks about these days in leadership circles.  It’s a different thing.  It’s not a vision of what a person or church or movement is going to do.  It’s a vision of how good God is and how fortunate I am to be His child and His friend on earth.  It’s a vision of that which already exists.  It’s a vision of the goodness and reality of God and then out of the energy and goodness of that vision grows a desire to do something good for God.  And then what happens is over time as that thing grows (it could be church, denomination , movement or whatever) people’s focus starts to be on the thing that is growing rather than on the reality of God and the result is that the mission replaces the vision.  Once that happens, then it’s just a matter of time before everything falls apart, because then the question becomes, ‘How do we make the thing bigger?’, ‘How do we make it look better?’  or ‘How do we at least keep it propped up?’  Then the preoccupation becomes numbers, goals, programs.  And then people have to live with stress, exhaustion and competition.  And then they burn out and it all falls apart.”

When I heard this, I thought that it was great advice for anybody contemplating serving God and staying on course.

–John Ortberg, Growing Deeper Series:  How Does a Leader Lead Well?