Over the past several weeks (months really), I have been watching the different candidates posture for nomination of the Republican presidential candidacy. I don't know who I am rooting for. Every time I start to think I have a guy in the race his campaign falls apart. I guess I should keep being a kid's pastor and not worry about being a political prognosticator. I look at stuff in my own life and ministry right now and I keep thinking the person that wins has to be the person that best communicates his or her vision for our country. Leadership has to begin with vision casting.
In my family, if I effectively communicate to my wife or kids what I want to do and how they will benefit from it then they are more likely to jump on board and be a part. I can tell my kids all day long hey go clean your room. They will go to their rooms and work and get distracted and piddle and my wife and I will get frustrated and a simple chore will become a pain in the butt situation for all of us. If I say, "Hey, a clean room gets you out to do something exciting like a trip to the toy store or a friend coming over". Then my kids are more likely to get it done in a timely manner. They need to catch the vision for cleaning the house quicker.
In my job as Pastor, I need to promote and sell a change or where we are going as a ministry to both kids and leaders to get them excited about what is going to happen. The more buy in for each event that I get on the front in, the more success an event will have. It is my job to promote cast a vision to kids and leaders in such a way, they don't want to miss out. One time, I had this idea for an event at my church, it was a multi church kids rally. We were going to have games and a service followed by pizza and several churches bought into the idea. The night came for the event just one other church showed up and only 5 kids from my group came. Evidently, I didn't cast the vision for the event in a way that was appealing. I got no buy in from volunteers or kids for the event. I had to change the way I promoted to kids and leaders. For kids, I realized that I needed to sell events to parents. Kids want to come to everything. Everything is an opportunity to hang out with friends and have fun. Parents needed to understand the logistics of an event and what they got out of it. I needed to show my leaders that each event they were needed for success. It was a tough lesson to really understand the greatest things we do are because other people are involved. It just showed me that vision casting is effective depending on not just what you are casting but to whom you are casting.
The Bible has all kinds of stories of people casting vision. Moses talking to the nation of Israel about leaving Egypt. Jesus getting the disciples to follow him. Paul leading Timothy through being a young minister. I can name off tons of others. Casting vision is the place where leadership begins. It is the place where you get people excited. It is the gun going off at the beginning of the race. It neither maintains nor finishes. But just like the old baseball saying goes, "You can't win the game in the first inning but you sure can lose it."
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