Abandoned Vision - Building on Past Vision

When speaking on vision Andy Stanley has repeatedly asked this question,

What problem does your vision solve?

If your vision solves a question no one is asking, you're going to become out-dated and irrelevant quickly. I frequently see chuches advertising themselves with statements like, "You can wear blue jeans" or "Come check out our rock'n band." The problem with those ads is that they're answering questions that fewer and fewer people are asking. Back in the 70's and 80's when the American church was trying to figure out what to do with rock music, those would have been good ads. However, today churches which let you wear jeans and have a band are a dime a dozen these days.

The underlying vision of these churches isn't bad (they want to reach non-traditional people with the gospel), but in these ads they're communicating this message by answering a question that few are asking. It's solving a problem which we already have a solution and everyone knows we have a solution. No one is sitting around asking, "When will a church appear which has a rock band and lets me wear jeans? When a church like that appears, I'm going back!"

So, how do you build on the past...keep asking the question, "What problem does our vision/mission/organization solve?"

If the problem you're solving has ceased to exist, it's time for the mission to end.

If the problem still exists, then the question becomes, "In our current context, what is the best way to solve the problem we exist to solve?"

In the church that means we keep asking, "What specific obstacles are keeping people from the gospel today?"

The book unChristian lays some of those out for us. According to their research, the unchurched view us as...

* antihomosexual
* judgmental
* hypocritical
* old-fashioned
* too political
* out of touch with reality
* insensitive to others
* boring

Those are some broad ways in which we're perceived poorly. What are the specifics of your environment?

We know what the obstacles to the gospel are. We know what we need to do. What we need are nww and innovative solutions to problems of our contenporary culture.