10 Vision and Momentum Killers

How do you navigate the challenges and advance the vision for your church to reach your city?

Chris Lagerlof

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Chris Lagerlof is the executive catalyst for Mission Orange County, which is working with churches in 34 cities to collaborate for the good of their city and plant churches that have a city focus. In this guest post, Chris shares what he’s learned about helping others move forward with their vision—and offers 10 vision and momentum killers that every church leader should know about! Chris is one of five leaders who will be talking about city movements at Exponential West in the City Movements Forum. Learn more here.
I’m really good at math, but I don’t enjoy it. In ministry, most everything we implement boils down to simple math. For example if you want 500 people in small groups, you’ll need 50 small group leaders. If you want to take 100 junior high kids to camp, you’ll need 10 youth leaders (and a lot of prayer). If you want to increase your attendance, you’ll need more seats, parking spots, services, volunteers, etc.
The bottom line is that ministry success is often built on simple math. I would even argue that the implementation and execution of vision is built on simple math. To that end, I want to introduce a math formula that I think is critical to moving vision forward in seeing results, especially in church planting: Vision + Clarity + Focus = Performance
I love this! It gets my heart pumping. Here are five principles to seeing your vision move forward as you plant your church.
Your vision must be bigger than the church you’re planting, or your impact will be limited. There’s a huge difference between how you view what’s around your church when you look through a Kingdom lens as opposed to the lens of a church. The church lens is small thinking and tends to be focused just on the gospel of salvation as opposed to the gospel of the Kingdom, which is way bigger! A church lens focuses on producing people who attend church but not necessarily disciples. When you look at anything through a kingdom lens, it’s going to look differently. For church planters, I think that’s huge. Otherwise the church becomes the only thing we know, and the church is the only way we think we can get anything accomplished. When the church is about four walls and a meeting place, we make disciples for the church instead of making disciples for the world. Disciples for the church tend to show up for church. Disciples for the city tend to be focused on transforming the city and the world. Our vision must be bigger than the church we are leading or planting and our obsession must be the Kingdom, not the church.
Clarity is more critical than vision. W. Edwards Deming once said, “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.” This is so true. Too often I hear people share great vision that makes absolutely no sense. Vision is the big picture, a conception of an image, and it indicates where you want to go. Clarity is the filter for our vision, not the vision by itself. Clarity helps us to know our stuff and how vision will become reality.
I get pretty fired up when I hear a church planter share their vision, ideas and dreams. It’s compelling and exciting. At the same time, I become frustrated when they can’t back it up with strategy and tactics. Vision always needs a strategy and plan attached to it. Of course, Nehemiah is the great visionary. I love how when King Artaxerxes asked what Nehemiah needed to accomplish his vision. He just about literally pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket with a list of resources and plan needed to be successful. In the same way, we must have clarity on where we’re going and what’s needed to get there!
Relentless focus will help you avoid vision and momentum killers! First, I believe momentum is usually a byproduct of great vision, and great vision needs momentum to move forward. There is definitely a relationship between vision and momentum. I define momentum as a series of wins needed to move forward and vision as the ability to see forward (or into the future). Recently, I spent a few hours with a few church planters. In our conversation, we talked about the things that can limit (or kill) vision and momentum. I decided to come up with 10 vision and momentum killers I often see in church planting.

1. The belief that vision and momentum happen in a vacuum. Great vision only gets accomplished with great relationships.
2. Settling for the status quo. Believing what is working today will work well in the future. Many times vision and momentum are killed by our past and present successes.
3. Living in “maintenance mode.” Personally, I think this may be the greatest vision and momentum killer. Thinking we have arrived is the beginning of a long slow, painful death for any movement or organization.
4. Not inviting others into the journey. Vision leaks and needs to be shared recklessly.
5. Not effectively resourcing your vision. If vision is important, it needs to have fuel.
6. Not listening. Simple, listen to God and listen to those most relationally connected to the vision. Sometimes we need to simply sit down, shut up and listen!
7. Lack of evaluation. Do as Nehemiah did: Take time to pause, reflect, evaluate and make mid-course corrections.
8. The refusal to join God where He is already at work. Why try to re-create what God has already done or is in the process of doing?
9. Not bringing your “A” game. Vision and momentum requires hard work and excellence. Live with a Malachi 1 mindset.
10. Changing your mind. Too many times momentum and vision die because we don’t remain committed to it, or we become fearful if it doesn’t work as quickly as we hoped.

You need more than a church plant or launch strategy. I’ve blogged about this before because it’s important to me! Don’t mistake participation for transformation! We get so excited about events and people showing up that we sometimes mistake it for actual transformation. In church planting, a lot of the models that have been most embraced for the last 25 years are really event-driven; they’re about the big events, the preview services and the launch. You see church planters and their launch team become a bunch of event planners.
This is something we talk about all the time with our church planters. Often guys will start a church and have some success, but they don’t know what to do next. In their DNA, there’s not a discipleship strategy or growth plan. They’ve got all these people coming, but they’re actually making attendees, not necessarily disciples. It is vital that you think through everything and that you think way beyond your launch. If you don’t do this, you’ll either end up planting a worship service or planting on a strategy of hope.
Your personal plan and ministry plan must be in sync. Last year, I decided that I needed a personal mission statement, so I called a friend who charges over $1,000 an hour to help CEO’s discover just that. After a fun but strenuous exercise, I landed on my personal mission statement. Simply stated, “I exist to help leaders and organizations move forward.” Just typing that makes my heartbeat and creates intense emotion within me! I have walked with several high-functioning leaders through the same exercise and have watched them fill up with passion as they discover their personal mission. The bottom line is simple: If what you’re doing and what you’re passionate about aren’t aligned, then your passion bucket will be empty and ministry won’t be fun and successful. We are at our best when what we are called to be and what we are called to do are in total sync!