The idea is that stuck churches, plateaued churches, churches that are truly struggling – they have a lower room identity permeating their culture.

In this ongoing series, Auxano Co-founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Senior Lead Navigator Jim Randall is interviewed by Gary Moritz, Church Revitalization Futurist, Strategist, Professor, and pastor of City United Church in Boston.

In this episode – the second in a series – Gary and Jim discuss clarity around understanding, crafting a sense of purpose, and bringing people to the vision that will draw them to Jesus and what he desires for his church.

Here are a few of the main ideas from the podcast:

• If we don’t provide people who are coming into our church with what I would call the clarity handle, they will create their own clarity for your church.
• Their own clarity – really quite frankly – is going to splinter and cause the church to go in so many different directions that it’s going to be stuck, going to be unhealthy.
• The idea is that stuck churches, plateaued churches, churches that are truly struggling – they have a lower room identity permeating their culture.
• When we talk about lower room identity, we talk about four attachments that people have once they come into this lower room. We’ve identified four of those primary attachments as their place, personality, programs, and people.
• The underlining theme that I hear through all this is kind of the biblical word, idolatry. So we idolize people, personalities, programs, and places we fail to put Jesus first, and everything else becomes first and Jesus becomes second.
• When we talk about the upper room, we talk about a place where God is revealing and sharing his vision for the church and for a person. And so it’s a place where you can clearly hear and see God’s vision.
• If the upper room is void of purpose of having a clear purpose for your church, then there is absolutely no reason for anyone to ever leave the lower room.
• We talk about the lower room as being a place of provision. It’s things that God are providing for us, but the upper room is a place of vision. The lower room is meant to draw people into church, but the upper room is meant to draw people up to God and to God’s desire for our church.
• There are three moves that a pastor can make: craft vision, cast vision, and connect vision.
• Craft vision is a little bit of the obvious. If scripture says that there’s no vision, that the people will perish. Well, I would almost say this, if there’s no vision, the people will cherish something. And so as ministry leaders, as pastors, we have to take responsibility to craft the vision, be a part of discovering what God’s vision is for our church .
• Cast vision means that vision transfers through people, not just through paper. And so you’ve got to cast vision verbally. You’ve got to cast vision visually. You’ve got to cast vision with your congregation. You’ve got to make sure that your congregation knows exactly who we are as a church and where we’re headed.
• Connect vision mans that we have to intentionally connect the dots between strategic decisions that we make in our church and that vision that we have crafted and that we’re casting.

> To employ an honest assessment of your vision language, download your copy of Auxano’s tool for breakthrough leaders: The Vision Headwaters TeamUP