KevinChilds.com

On August 30, 2009, 79-year-old Jud McKinney was driving a white pickup truck along a rural road in Winterset, Iowa. Riding a bike on the same road was 54-year-old Mark Grgurich. In a tragic turn of events, McKinney steered his truck into Grgurich, killing him. McKinney suffered from a vision problem known as macular degeneration—a blind spot in someone’s central vision. (From a recent blogpost in Church Marketing Sucks)

Vision is a picture of a preferred future.  In the ministry of a church (ROCK included), vision is seeing the future we believe God wants for us.  And it guides decisions.  It fuels what we do and filters out what we shouldn’t do.  It guides our arrows from bowstring to target.  With that in mind, we need to make sure we don’t suffer from macular vision degeneration.  We need to constantly check for blind spots.

• We need to make sure “getting what we want out of church” doesn’t blind us to opportunities to serve others THROUGH the church.
• We need to make sure immediate concerns (the need for more bodies, bricks, and bucks) don’t blind us to the need to see the long-term vision.
• We can’t let circumstances, drama, emotions, conflict, or any other temporary false urgency blind us to what is eternally important.
• We can’t let “the way I wish we’d do things” block an all-out effort to see how God wants things.

Vision is a funny thing. Sometimes it’s like looking through a camera lens that focuses very slowly.  Sometimes all we see is a fleeting glance or a fuzzy partial look at the picture.  But it seems that we nearly always see with greater clarity (and passion) when we stay aware of what causes blind spots.

Walt Disney passed away before Disney World in Orlando was built. At the opening dedication in 1971, five years after Walt’s death, someone commented to Mike Vance, creative director of Walt Disney Studios, “Isn’t it too bad [Walt] didn’t live to see this?” “He did see it,” Vance replied. “That’s why it’s here.”

Can you see a vibrant, growing, breath-taking movement of God sweeping through our community?  Can you see constant amazing life-change as the norm?  Long waiting lists for the next baptism.  Panic-stricken meetings between demons who have no idea how to stop it?   Rejoicing in Heaven at the scores of people who are being saved?

Me too.