Good, godly leaders know where God wants to take their ministries. Leadership starts with a vision. Do you have one?
I talk to pastors all the time who don’t really know what God wants them to do in their ministries. They’re just drifting. They don’t know what God wants for their church. They don’t know what God wants to do with their family.
And they’re frustrated. They’re tired of simply being a ministry caretaker – just keeping up with the status quo. Yet they have only a vague idea of where God might want their ministry to go.
Every leader should have a vision. But it has to be clear and very specific. Nothing becomes dynamic until it becomes specific. And the more specific you are, the better.
Knowing God’s vision for the future was crucial to Joshua when he was conquering the Promised Land. After Moses died, God told Joshua: “Moses my servant is dead. Now then you and all these people get ready to cross the Jordan people into the land I’m about to give them [the Israelites]. I will give you every place where you set your foot as I promised Moses. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon and from the great river the Euphrates to all the Hittite country to the great sea on the west.” (Joshua 1:1-4, NIV)
Joshua knew what he was supposed to do. God was very specific. Before Joshua would conquer the Promised Land, God told him what he would possess. And what God promised is exactly what Joshua found.
As your vision for your church becomes more specific, you’ll find that it is magnetic – it will pull you toward it and pull other people toward it too.
When I first started Saddleback, God gave me a very specific vision. And I laid that very specific vision in front of the church. I told the 60 people who showed up for the church’s dress rehearsal (of our first worship service) that I envisioned a church of 20,000 people with 50 acres of land that sent missionaries all around the world. That was a big goal! And very, very specific.
Praise God, we’ve reached and surpassed all of the goals I shared that day.
How do you set a godly goal? Get away and talk to God. Find a place as far away from the noise of everyday life and ministry as possible. Then, ask God what he wants to do through your ministry.
Then wait – and listen. Keep your mouth shut and your ears open. Resist the urge to fill up your time with words. God will speak to you, but you must give him time to do so.
You also need to be prepared to write down what God says. Take a journal with you. Journaling will keep you focused and help you remember what God tells you.
The Bible says, “If people can’t see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves; But when they attend to what he reveals, they are most blessed.” (Proverbs 29:18 MSG)