You cannot preach a vision sermon series if you do not have a clear vision. A clear picture of where God is calling your church to grow and minister is the backbone of any sermon series, especially a vision sermon series.
Communicating a vision for your church has always been important, and in a post-pandemic world, it’s more important than it’s ever been. With 24/7 news cycles, economic uncertainty, and culture wars that continue to escalate people are overwhelmed, isolated, divided, and in need of hope.
As a leader, you need something that will bring them together for the sake of the gospel — and you can’t do that if you don’t have a compelling vision or can’t communicate it with clarity.
Communicating your vision with clarity means that you’re talking about it in such a way that your people connect with it, memorize it, and embrace it as their own.
Why does this matter? It is possible to have a compelling vision from God and yet fail to recruit believers to help bring that vision into reality.
When you have not done the hard work of making a compelling vision applicable and digestible to your people, the vision will die. It’s like going on a road trip without thinking about what supplies you’re going to take or where everyone’s going to sit.
Bottom line? Don’t be cute. Sacrificing depth and clarity of purpose for a catchy phrase is never worth the trade-off.
Right now, you might be thinking, “I’m not thinking about next year, I need to get through Christmas!”
Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with our Christmas Marketing Blueprint episode that will help you increase your attendance/viewership. If you haven’t seen it already, though, you should check it out sooner rather than later- there’s a certain timeline you need to follow. Since your online Christmas experience is going to be a bigger deal than ever this year, we’ve also done an episode on seven streaming ideas for your online Christmas service.
After you’ve planned Christmas, casting vision for the new year is what happens next.
We’re going to take a hypothetical situation and walk you through it so that you can apply it to your own God-given vision for your church.
To provide even more meat on the topic, the Preaching Through Podcast offers a great discussion on Preaching Through A Vision Sermon Series with Luke Simmons of Redemption Church Gateway in Mesa, Arizona.
Start Your Ministry Vision With A Clear, Simple Statement
Through prayer, thought, discussion, evaluation, and supplication, you will hopefully have an idea of what God wants to do through you and in your church.
When that vision comes, you need to boil the entire idea into a single, very clear and simple statement.
This is worth repeating:
Your message needs to be simple and clear, not clever.
If your vision is a hundred things or not well-defined, it’s going to be very difficult for people to hop on board. Do your best to figure out where God wants to take you and communicate that in one sentence.
When looking in the rear view mirror of your ministry, you have overcome many obstacles and the challenges you’re facing in the future can be overcome as well. Having a clear, simple statement gives understandable language to everyone in the church, informing them what ‘we’ are doing in the coming season of life.
For instance, if we are looking at the realities facing the church post covid-19, our statement might be something like this…
“To reach people who are not attending church, we are going to launch a digital, online campus.”
In other words, our vision is to have a healthy digital online campus.
There are a few great things about this. First, it’s clear and direct — it leaves no question about the goals. Second, it’s specific and names a measurable outcome for success.
As you preach your vision sermon series you have a single statement that you can continue to return to, emphasize, extrapolate, and bring to life.
Communicate the Problem the Vision Will Solve In Your Preaching
If there’s no tension between where you are and where you want to be, your vision will not be perceived as important. Think through: what’s the problem you’re trying to overcome?
So from our example, the problem would be:
“Because of the pandemic, many people have stopped attending church in person because of large crowds. This causes them to be more lonely, isolated, and disconnected from a relationship with Jesus.”
This statement goes beyond saying what the problem is for the church, and talks about how it affects people and that’s a good thing!
When you’re communicating this vision for the first time in your preaching, you have to lead with the problem and that tension. Let people know WHY this is important, and your vision will be much more impactful.
Communicate the Philosophical Problem
As important as it is to communicate the problem in general, you have a responsibility to communicate the philosophical problem.
When you’re defining the problem, don’t just lead with emotions. Obviously, you want to show empathy and care for the people affected by the problem, but that’s just the starting point.
As you continue to define the problem and bring the realities of the problem to life, you want to point something bigger than a momentary or seasonal problem. The problem is just a symptom of something more important that effects eternity. Preach to these realities and what you believe the church’s eternal response should be.
In a post-covid vision, the philosophical problem would be:
“People should understand the importance of the church in their lives, and shouldn’t have to fear attending a weekend meeting. We can be a place where people connect to other people in person, but also online so that they can grow in their faith through a healthy and loving community.”
Communicate the Plan for Beyond the Pulpit
Casting vision during your sermon series, yet not providing a clear plan of action is a recipe for failure.
Look back at the most influential seasons of ministry and you’ll most likely find a clear and compelling vision taught in a simple, yet powerful way.
Look back at the most frustrating seasons of ministry and you may find a lack of clear vision.
If you want people to come a long with you for this God-given journey, they need to know where you’re headed.
A great way to do this is to boil down your plan to three-steps.
In our example, this might look something like the following:
- Step one: We need to identify leaders in our church that will help us launch this new online campus.
- Step two: Train leaders and resource team
- Step three: Launch an online campus and grow our reach in our community.
Obviously, all of these steps will be broken into sub-steps and action items, but having a road map for people really helps. You can put deadlines on these steps and communicate them to your congregation. When you do this, it seems possible to them, because you’re taking things one step at a time and demonstrating that you’ve given thought to how it might work out.
It’s also important to have a three-step plan because people aren’t inside your head. They can’t imagine the vision the way you do. So if you present this grand, sweeping vision without any specifics, they’ll get lost. However, if you break it down into three easy-to-remember steps, they can grasp that and become engaged emotionally.
Communicate Potential Wins (And Call Out Past Wins)
Communicating wins can best be done by answering the question, “What would it look like if we accomplished this? How would our world look different?”
In our example, that would sound something like this:
“People in our community will experience the joy of knowing Jesus and growing in their relationship with Him. They will benefit from plugging into an online, local community of believers where they and their children will hear the gospel, be challenged in their faith, and take the gospel to other parts of our community.”
Basically, you’re saying, “Imagine what could happen if we nail this!” This gets people excited because they start to see what could be.
Beyond pointing towards the future, explore the past and find examples of how this vision has already come to life and share the stories with a voicing of, “… and this is what we want more of!”
Communicate What Could Be Lost
When we’re presented with a new idea, the first thought in our minds is often something along the lines of, “Yes, but is it worth it?” If there’s nothing at risk, the vision will not be as compelling as keeping the status quo.
Communicating this effectively goes back to the problem we discussed earlier of, “what’s at stake,” or “what could be lost if you don’t solve the problem?”
Here’s the example:
“If we fail, people will continue to become more disconnected from the local church. Our children and families will become more isolated, and our community will suffer more from the lack of gospel awareness.”
This is a powerful reminder of our personal responsibility in this area.
Humans are more scared of losing than excited by gaining. This sometimes causes us to not risk things in order to make gains. By communicating the loss, you’re helping to communicate what’s really at stake if nothing changes.
In your preaching you want to make sure the stakes are clear, but you also want to point to scripture to serve as the motivation for stepping up… it’s not action we’re after, it is Jesus, and we must point to Jesus as the ultimate reason to take action.
Clearly State Your Call to Action
The call to action is one of the most important parts of preaching a vision series… yet it’s often skipped.
It’s too simple and too important to omit!
All you need to do is answer the question, “What do I need our people to do?” Asked another way, what’s one simple action step they can take immediately to help you accomplish this vision? Don’t just get people excited without telling them how they can help make the vision a reality.
In this example, the call to action could be something like:
“Sign up for our digital campus discovery meeting, donate to church digital campus initiative, pray, and attend our digital campus discovery meeting.”
That’s a super easy next step for people to take and will help you get well on your way to getting this thing going.
Putting Everything Together for A Compelling Vision Sermon Series
All of the work you put in ahead of preaching your vision sermon series will inevitably come together. In our example of a post-covid vision, here is how it could look.
“Many people in our community are becoming disconnected from the local church, more isolated from relationships with other people, and this has all been the result of the pandemic. By the end of this year, we will plant a new online campus for people in our community, so they can be confident about attending church. When people can confidently attend church, they’ll build relationships with other people, connect and grow in their relationship with Jesus, and our community will see how the gospel can transform a city.”
As we said at the beginning, it’s important that you have a vision.
You’ve probably already prayed and felt like God has given you a direction for the year ahead. When it’s time to communicate that vision, you have to make sure that it’s clear, compelling, and your congregation is able to rally around it.
How to Communicate A Compelling Vision from Hello Church! Podcast
Want to dive deeper on this subject? Watch the below episode from Hello Church! Podcast. Much of the same content is discussed and you’ll benefit from the extended discussion.
