I am bombarded with talk about vision. Both on a macro level and filtering down to the level of individual technical directors and tech teams, we can’t seem to get enough vision — What’s your vision for your team? Where’s your vision statement?
This is a problem. Here’s my case.
All of us appreciate visionary leadership, and we have all been greatly affected by it. Whether our visionary leaders are historic figures, great authors, caring teachers, parents, or bosses; we appreciate someone who exposes us to a better, new way of living. In the classic example, they tell us, “You can’t stay here. There’s something better available. Here’s how things could be. This is who you can become.”
This seems obvious to me: if you are not calling people to something different, you aren’t leading. In a word, leadership is change. Strategy is important. It tells us how we are going to get there, but fundamentally, visionary leadership always includes change.
If leadership is change, the greatest most important leadership lesson, then, is to create an environment where change is expected and embraced as natural. Would any of us describe the average church this way? From updating decor to outdated programs, the last words we would use to describe church is expecting and embracing change.
Life is a series of goodbyes. We say goodbye to childhood friends and childhood places, first girlfriends and High School fun. As we get a little older, our friends move on to other jobs or churches. Our kids grow up and leave the house. Older still, and we have to permanently say goodbye. Life is a long road and it both narrows and expands as we progress.
This is the post that did not want to be written, even though I wanted to write it. As my friend DB remarked, once you say goodbye, it makes it real in a way you were pretending you didn’t have to admit. And this is a real issue. Almost everyone I know has left a ministry assignment at least once in their lives. We all say goodbye, either from leaving or being left behind. We don’t always get to say everything we want to.
I’m going to make a giant logical leap in this post. I am going to take an article about ‘Gamer’ culture and apply it to church culture.
Why?
Because I believe the cultural challenges we face as church people are not all that different than cultural challenges faced in other areas of life and spheres of influence.
I am hoping that by showing the futile energy being spent on an outdated paradigm in ‘Gamer’ culture—and that being something most readers don’t relate to or care about (and thus, have no pre-built defenses)—I can then help you see that the same scenario (an outdated paradigm and the futile energy being spent on it) is at work in the church today.
I am hoping that this very real-life analogy will jar some into understanding who otherwise couldn’t get there.
Truth is a big deal.
It is all too common, in my experience, for church people to hide behind carefully constructed phrases and partial revelations. Under the guise of grace, we withhold truth—which means we choose darkness and Satan’s M.O which ultimately nullifies our goodwill.
Truthfulness requires us to speak-all. To shade meaning is to literally bring the darkness of the enemy into our words.
This should not be.
Those of us who work behind the scenes have a role to play in this. We are not passive conduits passing on information without responsibility. There is no heavenly sanctioned Nuremberg defense that will let us off the hook if we use deceptive methods to communicate the Gospel. Indeed, it is impossible to do so. We cannot serve two masters. We cannot use the enemies tactics to advance the Kingdom of God.
Technically Thinking 