The naked pastor, AKA David at www.nakedpastor.com has stirred up a fun little controversy over the issue of vision-casting.
Sometimes a church (and sometimes the Church) can get caught up in one stage of the Christian journey and fail to realize that the vision has changed. God’s vision, not ours. We can be so caught up in realizing a vision that we forget the purpose for the vision.
Okay, going back to the scripture that this comes from. Most people only know the KJV version and only half of the verse.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18a (KJV)
and the NIV here. (We are not going to debate translations by the way)
“Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint;
but blessed is he who keeps the law.” Proverbs 29:18 (NIV)
Okay great. So as a student of scripture, I come to the question “What is God revealing?” Not “what direction should I hasten to accomplish?”, “What goals should I set?”, or “lets form an exploratory committee to debate and conclude a particular direction for the curriculum of our VBS program for ages 3-6 during the first week of the second summer from now.” Yeah, go ahead and laugh, you know those churches are out there.
I guess there is an element of being spirit-led that we can cringe from at times. That doesn’t mean using God as an excuse to be lazy or being completely disorganized and not even preparing anything. It means seeking direction from God.
So, I must use the term vision in a new light, one that I believe God intended.
How’s your vision? meaning:
How clearly are you seeing God? and how are you fitting into what God’s plans are?
So often we put up our pretty stain glass windows in front of the true glory of who God is and get blinded by our own fanciful projections. This is idolatry in it’s most subtle form.
