Why Good Churches Fizzle

Every survivalist, Boy Scout, or hunter worth his or her salt has a compass. That small contraption provides the user with the proper orientation to the destination, allows the person to course-correct their travels, and provides utility for map reading. Without a true sense of direction, you would be wandering aimlessly in the wilderness, and you wouldn’t know if you were heading toward salvation or destruction.
A vision statement is the compass of a church. Without it, your church will be heading somewhere, but you won’t know where that destination is located. You will be unable to course-correct, because you have no idea what you’re aiming for. And, like a myriad of churches before you, you’ll be wandering aimlessly in a spiritual desert, unsure of your success or failure. It may not seem apparent now, but every successful church has a clearly articulated vision statement under their belt. Let me introduce you to a church that desperately needed a moral compass.
I was contracted to help a church that was dying. At one time, this was a vibrant church with a large youth program, an active congregation, and a growing number of families. Now, however, this church was on its deathbed. The congregation had dwindled to about twenty faithful individuals, there were no teen-agers or children, and the median age of the membership was approximately 55 years old. Let’s call this church the First Community Church (a pseudonym).
The first session was designed to help First Community Church (FCC) re-engineer its identity, to discover a new vision. FCC’s demise was paradoxically due to its success in its heyday. As the membership grew, and programs abounded, the leadership began to function without any direction or vision. They were just “playing church,” maintaining rather than building the Kingdom of God. This passive approach to ministry crept into all areas of the church life, and soon people began to leave, first the teens, then the families, and finally all but the stalwart few. How can the leaders re-create a new, exciting vision for this church?
I suggested that FCC designate a future weekend retreat for prayer, renewal, and fasting, so that the leadership could discern God’s direction for them. But in the meantime, I challenged the existing leaders to create a new inspirational creed for FCC, that is, a new vision.
But what, exactly, is a vision? I explained it to the leaders this way: “A vision is the defining characteristic of your church, the essence of who you are. It is your raison d’être, your ultimate reason for existence. In a short, pithy statement, a vision inspires you to fight the good fight, to finish the race, to keep the faith (II Timothy 4:7). It is a description of your passion.”
Here are five characteristics of an effective vision:
1. It is essential that a church have an agreed upon vision. Sometimes a church will inherently understand that their vision is to feed the poor, or to expositionally teach the Word verse-by-verse, to send out missionaries, or to emphasize the gifts of the Spirit. But stated publicly or not, successful churches understand their priorities, because no church can do everything.
2. Successful churches have a clear identity. Why is this so important? Because people can decide whether they belong or not. All churches want to be inclusive of everyone that walks in their doors. But successful churches understand that if a Pentecostal person is visiting a Southern Baptist church, or a hymn-loving parishioner visits a contemporary worship service, it will cause friction, not unity. With a clear identity, people can make the proper choice to stay or go.
3. A good vision statement has certain characteristics. If you’re vision statement is too vague, wordy, non-descript, ambiguous, general, or uninspiring, you might as well not have one. At least that way people can come up with what they think is the vision statement, although it might be their own platitude.
4. A good vision statement allows you to focus on excellence. Too many fizzling churches are attempting to succeed at too many ministries. In spreading themselves too thin, there are not enough gifted people for any one ministry to succeed. My Senior Pastor gave me sage advice when I was a young pastor. He said, “Let’s do a few things well, rather than a lot of ministries in a mediocre manner.”
5. A good vision statement helps you in becoming an effective steward of your limited resources. Imagine that your church’s vision is to reach every elementary school child with the gospel within a ten mile radius. That’s a huge undertaking. If that’s your focus, then you’re not going to spend an exorbitant amount of time and money on missionary endeavors, planning senior adult retreats, or hosting Christian teen-age concerts. Not that any of those things are bad things; they just aren’t your priority.
These characteristics identify five key components of an effective vision. However, even if you incorporate all of these components into a vision, that doesn't guarantee that it is God's vision. So how do you discern that? That's the topic for the next section...