Why So Many Churches Copy Another Church’s Vision

In their latest edition of the Fully Engaged Church podcast, MAG Bookkeeping President Randy Ongie talks with Shawn Lovejoy. Shawn has a heart for coaching leaders, pastoring pastors and helping them conquer what keeps them up at night. Shawn previously served as Founding and Lead Pastor of Mountain Lake Church, Directional Leader of churchplanters.com and the annual Velocity Conference. Now, Shawn has devoted himself to pastors and leaders full-time through his ministry Courage To Lead.
When Shawn left Mountain Lake Church, he had a very strong vision that he passed on to a young, new leader really well. He says it was the strength of that vision that he had fought relentlessly to protect that was responsible for such a smooth transition, not himself.
This idea of vision and the vision development process is something Shawn and Randy talk about a lot in the podcast. It’s something church leaders often have a hard time getting their arms around, but Shawn says it’s really pretty simple. God found one person and whispered in their ear first. Then he called that person to go out and find people to help.
That idea may be simple, but the process of cultivating a vision is not. Everyone wants it to be easy, which is why Shawn thinks there are so many copycat visions and churches. They want to skip over the wrestling with God part since it can take weeks, months, even years. Shawn says that before the first Mountain Lake service, they had four to six people who prayed, fasted and wrestled until they “knew that they knew that they knew” that God had spoken.
There’s also a difference between a good idea and a God idea. We can all see good ideas from thousands of churches all over the world by sitting at our computers. This can lead to the tendency to run around from good idea, to good idea, to good idea rather than getting down on your knees and wrestling down that unique vision. There are a lot of churches with good ideas, but the ones that are so powerful have God ideas. They aren’t necessarily doing anything especially unique with ministry or music, but “they know that they know that they know.” People can tell the difference.
Many aspects of ministry aren’t fun when it comes to the WHAT. It’s the WHY that moves people. No matter how passionate someone is, after doing that same thing for six weeks, six months or six years, it becomes old hat. But constantly reminding yourself and others of why you do it is what makes it fun.
Shawn says he spent a lot of time with the leaders of Mountain Lake reminding them of their why and discussing vision. This helped keep the sanctity of the vision in place as they thought strategically rather than practically. There are many ways to do this, and Shawn’s new book, Be Mean About Vision, is a great tool. At the end of each chapter, there are follow-up journal questions that can lead to some amazing discussions. We encourage all church leaders to check the book out!
I also encourage you to check out MAG Bookkeeping if your church or business needs virtual bookkeeping assistance.  They are the best out there!
This is a guest post by MAG and originally appeared on their site.

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