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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