How to Maintain Vision

I remember when I first got my drivers license at the ripe old age of 16 years old (that was the driving age in Illinois).  Of all the lessons that my parents taught me, one that my dad taught me sticks out: the importance of headlights.  He explained that headlights light the way the rest of the car will go - where the headlights go, so goes the rest of the car.  He also included a warning - don't overdrive your headlights.  What this meant was don't drive so fast that by the time you see something in the headlights you can't react to it - you'll be in trouble.

Visionary leadership in a church is very much like headlights.  It is the primary job of the pastor and then ministry leaders to set the vision and be the headlights for the rest of the congregation.  It doesn't mean the rest of the congregation is in the dark, it just means that the people should expect its leaders to be praying, seeking out God, discerning His truth, and directing the church to follow that truth.  If leaders aren't doing that  - they are not leaders - they are just taking up seats in a room.

Let us all seek to be headlights in the Kingdom, driving our communities forward toward the Kingdom of God.  Let us never take the easy way out and get lazy and merely focus internally.

"It is not for the well I have come, but for the sick . . . " 

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