Sep
28
2011

Vision Leaks, or Don’t Waste Your Best Stuff

An article by Matt

Yesterday Larry Osborne shared something at The Nines, that made me just nod my head so hard I nearly got whiplash. Osborne is the Pastor of North Coast Church, and the author of about a million books. What he said was that he often has some ideas that are so good, that he can’t waste them on a preaching series.

What?

So often in the church we make our preaching series the star of the show. All of our best ideas, content, and creativity go into developing six or eight week blocks of teaching that we work through and then refer back to from time to time. Osborne suggests that this is not the best way to go about things. Osborne suggests that the best ideas, the ones that are really valuable, are ideas that we should be using again and again throughout our preaching… that we should be “dripping it into our messages” on a regular basis.

This reminds me of a phrase I that has been thrown around in church circles for years: vision leaks. While I doubt that it was his intention, I think Osborne nailed the phrase in both of it’s meanings:

Vision Casting. The Andy Stanley version of vision leaks tells us that if we are not continuously casting vision that our congregation loses sight of that vision. Based on Osborne’s statement, our vision needs to be dripped into our messages, consistently being communicated to our congregation as a way to keep it in front of them.
Core Values. Close to ten years ago Ron Martoia spoke about how vision needs to leak from everything that you communicate to your congregation. Your church’s vision and core values need to be apparent, leaking from, every sermon, event, ministry, and communication of your church.

The most powerful idea, thought, and story that your church has is the vision that God has given you. Your vision and your ministry philosophy should be oozing from everything that you do, and every sermon that you preach. Don’t waste your church’s best stuff on one sermon, one series, or one event… let it leak out of everything that you do.

How do YOU communicate your church’s best thoughts?

Rich

Good thoughts. I completely forgot about the nines conf yesterday. I am church planting (8mon old) and we’ve been having this conversation lately…making vision stick to everything we do and why we exist as a church called of God.
I’m a little thrown off by “don’t waste your best content on a sermon” because I don’t think he means something like 1) teach this in a course or 2) write it in a book and it will last longer. Or does he mean that?
I applaud the thought of sprinkling the message (core values) in every sermon, teaching, outreach, counseling, etc. People will get the picture soon enough.

BTW…I used to love the Redskins

http://www.churchthought.com Matt Steen

Used to? I will pray for an end to your backsliding ways.

What he was getting at (at least what I thought I heard) was the idea that so often we take our best stuff, preach it, and then never refer back to it. He was encouraging pastors to “drip it in” to nearly everything that they teach.

I heard him say that, and couldn’t help but think that he was talking about the very core message of the church and how it needs to be communicated far more often than we normally do.