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Using the word “vision” these days is like Mother Hubbard’s dress, it covered
everything and touched nothing. But once a certain tool becomes popular,
everyone has to have one. In fact, these days if you don’t have a vision
statement for what you are doing, you are surely a failure, a follower, or at
best a poor leader—and we will avoid those labels at all cost. Once the highly
“successful” person attributes his “success” to his obtaining of a “vision”
(especially a divine vision), all who desire “success” will quickly follow the
pattern, hoping for similar results.
According to Mother Goose, Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard to get her
poor dog a bone, but when she got there the cupboard was bare and so the poor
dog had none. We, too, read the vision statements that are supposed to have
come from God and walk away unconvinced that it is scriptural and from God at
all. They may range from cookie cutter style to wildly imaginative, some
claiming absolute divine intervention and others being merely good advice. If
you lack imagination, you may easily borrow from hundreds online.
As with many contemporary subjects, we may read what we want to read into vision
statements. Some writers use the word as a synonym for a good idea or even a
burden to get something done. Others include “divine” or “God-given.” For
example, A.B. Bruce, an older writer, in his commentary on Hebrews uses the word
as merely insight, “For this sad state of matters there is but one radical cure:
clear vision of the ideal, vivid realization of the grace wherein believers in
Jesus stand, insight into the incomparable value of the Christian faith.”1
But Andy Stanley, in his contemporary and wildly popular book,
Visioneering, repeatedly uses phrases
such as, “a divine vision,” “a divinely-ordained vision,” “God’s intervention,”
“a God-given vision,” leaving the reader wondering just what he means by
“vision.”2
There is an obvious difference in how contemporary writers describe God’s part
in the individual’s vision and how many other writers describe it. George Barna
says, “When God raises up leaders, He has a specific vision for the people those
leaders have been called to mobilize. . . This entails developing a vision
statement, which is a brief, punchy declaration of the unique purpose for which
God has allowed that specific ministry to exist. . . . Vision, in short, becomes
the centerpiece of the ministry—and of the leader’s life.”3 On the
other hand, John MacArthur writes, “They are undermining the Bible when they do
not regard it as the single authority. Those who believe God speaks regularly
with special messages for individual Christians trivialize His Word.”4
I know many will say that writers like Stanley and Barna do not mean that God
actually speaks to them, and others will say that writers like MacArthur are
only talking about Charismatics. But this is the problem. Those of us who read
English can read what Stanley writes, and unless he intends for us all to be
imprecise postmoderns, we have to take him for what he says. On page 56 of his
book he is describing the virgin Mary’s vision from Gabriel. On the next page
he says, “Think back for a minute. Can you remember one Old or New Testament
story in which the responsibility of figuring out how a divine vision would be
fulfilled fell to the men or women to whom God gave the vision?” He then uses
Moses, David and Jesus as examples. On the same page he writes, “If we were
talking about good ideas, that would be different. Good ideas are limited to
our potential, connections, and resources. If you are simply pursuing a good
idea, then you need to devote a great deal of time and energy trying to figure
out how to pull it off. A divine vision, on the other hand, is limited only by
God’s potential and resources. . . When God gives you a vision, there’s a sense
in which you stand back and watch it happen.”5 Now, how is the
reader of English supposed to take Stanley’s use of “vision” when he compares
the believer’s “vision” to Mary, Moses, David and Jesus? And yet in other
places he calls loving one’s wife, raising one’s kids, and witnessing to one’s
neighbor as “divinely inspired visions.”6 Such comparison of apples
and oranges in dealing with a single subject is amazing.
In his fine book Escape from Church, Inc.,
E. Glenn Wagner takes issue with the current trend toward personal vision by
leaders. The problem, as he sees it, is that there is an unbiblical emphasis in
the ministry on leadership rather than on shepherding. This has caused men who
should be humble shepherds to strive to be successful visionaries. He writes,
“A leader’s effectiveness is built on vision, not trust or character.
Shepherding is just the opposite. Shepherding is built on character, with
vision growing out of earned trust. That means the number one goal for a pastor
is not to articulate a great vision but to help his sheep trust him and know
him.”7
Terry Conley (MCR, CCIM, and husband of our contributor, Debra Conley) has
successfully navigated the business world for many years as a believer. He
replies in an email, “A lot of the current thinking about vision is being driven
by a book that was published a few years ago,
Good to Great, by Jim Collins. One of the main themes is that you need
to get the right people ‘on the bus’ and in the right seats before your vision
for the future can take hold. In the book he mentions various ways to get
people either on the bus or off and if on, into the correct seats to support
your vision. I have even heard his term BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) used
in sermons when talking about the future of the church.”
Unfortunately many pastors are using their “vision” as a way to get the church
to adopt what they wanted to do in the first place. After all, if this vision
is from God, who are the laymen to oppose it? If pressed for proof that this
vision is from God he can disclaim any real divine activity, but when in need of
extra clout he can press the divine element as authoritative. The vote of the
congregation becomes simply an affirmation of the pastor’s closeness to God.
The problem as I see it is an elastic use of the word “vision.” Especially in
Andy Stanley’s Visioneering, the author
jumps back and forth between prophets and apostles receiving direct
communication from God and average believers seeking God’s will. No distinction
is made between the two. Though he is careful not to use charismatic-type
lingo, there is still a definite proposition that God will give you your own
vision. As I have already shown, no safeguards are placed on just how God does
this sort of thing. Here are a few notes that I have written down.
First, if people really receive information from God which becomes the basis for
their life, then God is still in the business of giving revelation and we have
nothing to say to the Charismatics or the cults. Second, the vision can become
the basis for the Bible rather than the other way around. For example, one
website has it, “We envision all of our people constantly growing in their
knowledge of the Bible.” Think about that. The vision tells them to study
God’s Word. Third, if, as Stanley says on one hand, every thing you determine
to do in life is God’s vision for you (loving your wife, raising your kids) then
everything in life is a vision. But then, of course, nothing could be a
vision. Fourth, Stanley uses Mother Teresa as a great example of having a
vision from God. Evidently then, theology (specifically salvation) doesn’t
matter in God’s selection of vision recipients. Fifth, it would be better to
call most of these things God’s will, or God’s calling, or God’s leading rather
than to force these into divine communication language.
This would be a good place to include some Biblical data about the word
“vision.” There are basically four Hebrew words that are translated with our
English word “vision” and only one Greek word. All of these words have meanings
such as appearance, sight, dream, revelation, seeing i.e. vision. These
occurrences ALWAYS speak of miraculous interventions. The great majority of
them are in the prophetic passages of the Bible. 22 are in Daniel alone and 13
in Ezekiel, both highly visionary books. Its only use in the Gospels is from
the transfiguration when the disciples are instructed not to relate what they
saw until after the resurrection. 12 of the 17 New Testament usages are in the
book of Acts and, again, all relate miraculous communication from God. In other
words, if we would be completely Biblical in our vocabulary, we would only use
the word “vision” to speak of times when God communicated His Word directly to
revelatory writers and speakers. Such limited usage would eliminate confusing
definitions and manipulation. However, seeing that this will not be the case, I
would only encourage believers to use the word “vision” in the plain sense of
burden or desire.
A final illustration will serve as a reminder of these thoughts. In the late
1700s William Carey and his fellow Baptist Pastor Andrew Fuller were burdened by
God to do more for world-wide missions. Through their efforts modern missions
was born. Carey became the missionary and Fuller was the president of the
mission board, apologist, and theologian. In fact, Spurgeon called Fuller the
greatest theologian of his day.
If ever men could have used the word “vision” to express what God had laid on
their hearts, it would have been Carey and Fuller. Rather, in Fuller’s
voluminous writings he argues for just the opposite. Among his many writings
are personal letters, diaries and theological correspondences with various
people of his time. In one correspondence addressed to a prominent member of
his own church he wrote,
After a while, I began to suspect, whether this way of taking comfort, or of
casting it away, or of judging of future events, and regulating my conduct
accordingly, were either of them just or solid. And in a little time I
perceived that I had no reason given me in Scripture to expect the knowledge of
my own state, or of the state of others, or of any future events, by such
means. I knew that the prophets and apostles had extraordinary revelations made
to them, being divinely inspired to write the Holy Scriptures; but, vision and
prophecy being now sealed up (Daniel 9:24) and woe being denounced upon the man
that should add or diminish (Revelation 22:10), I concluded that we ought not to
look for any new revelation of the mind of God, but to rest satisfied with what
has been revealed already in his Word.
Indeed, I did not formerly suspect that I had been carried away by a supposed
new revelation; but, seeing my impressions came in the words of Scripture,
thought it was only the old revelation applied afresh by the Spirit of God.
But, upon examination, I found myself mistaken; for, though the words of
Scripture were the means of the impression, yet the meaning of those words, as
they stood in the Bible, was lost in the application.8
In the end, Mother Hubbard became subject to the dog she was trying to help.
The last line of the long poem reads:
The dame made a curtsy,
The dog made a bow;
The dame said, “Your servant,”
The dog said, “Bow-wow.”
Notes:
1. A.B. Bruce,
The Epistle to the Hebrews (Minneapolis,
Klock & Klock, 1980) 405.
2. Andy Stanley,
Visioneering (Sisters, OR: Multnomah
Publishers, 1999) 12,63,71,75 respectively.
3. George Barna,
The Second Coming of the Church
(Nashville: Word Publishing, 1998) 164.
4. John MacArthur,
The Master’s Plan for the Church
(Chicago: Moody, 1991) 26.
5. Stanley, 56-57. 6. Stanley,
26.
7. E. Glenn Wagner,
Escape From Church, Inc. (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1999) 148.
8. Michael A.G. Haykin, ed.
The Armies of the Lamb (Dundas,
Ontario: Joshua Press, 2001) 117-118.
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