How to Develop your Ministry’s Vision
As the leader of your ministry, people are looking to you to set the direction for your ministry. That direction may have come from your pastor or leadership, but it’s your job to communicate it to your team.
At one church where I served, the only direction the pastor gave me was to start small groups in our kids services. The rest was up to me. That gave me a pretty broad playing field. Starting small groups is a big job, but it doesn’t clearly define what I’m supposed to do week in and week out. That’s the job of your vision for your ministry. It’s the 10,000-foot view of where your ministry is going and guides all your decisions.
But how do you make sure you’re headed in the same direction as the rest of the church? How do you decide which direction to go? How do you define your wins? I’ll give my answer for each of these throughout this post, starting with the first one.
Before you do any of this, start with prayer. And then bathe each step with it. God will show you the way.
Align with the Church’s Vision
In a previous post, I talked about lining up your vision with the church. This is essential if you’re in youth or kidmin. You don’t want to create a ministry that’s an island unto itself. Your pastor brought you on to ultimately do one thing: carry out their vision in the ministry you oversee. Even though all my pastor asked me to start was small groups, I still needed to align my kidmin with his vision. He would not have been happy if I started groups but then went outside the scope of his vision for the church.
Following the church’s vision might mean you’re stuck in the basement never to be seen or heard from or you’re out front and center all the time. Whatever it is, you’re under authority. To do anything outside of that vision is rebellious. If you can’t work under the pastor’s vision, it’s better to leave than try to make it work. It won’t be good for anyone.
I’m not saying you can’t or shouldn’t have a say in your vision. What I am saying is that when you start creating the vision for your ministry, you need to start with the church’s vision first.
For instance, at one of the churches I served (not the small group one), the vision was:
“We are a community of believers who connect to God, the community, and each other.”
That’s great for the whole church, but I wanted to tweak it a little to line up the goals for the children’s ministry. So, my vision statement was:
“We are creating a community of believers in kids who connect to God, the Bible, the community, and each other.”
When you look at my statement versus the church, they are similar but not the same. Because they were so similar, I knew that we would accomplish both our vision and the church's.
But how do we craft a statement like the one I gave above? How do we decide the direction we should go? That’s where we’ll go next.
Imagine What Life Can Be
Vision is imagining where you want to go and then painting the vision for everyone else. Once they grasp the ideas, you can head off together.
But you have to do the imagining first. Don’t start by sitting in a room with your lead team and asking them where the ministry and the people you lead should go. They absolutely should have input in the vision, but as the leader, you set the tone and the initial direction.
So, to get started, to borrow Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits, begin with the end in mind. Ask yourself: when your people are done with your ministry, what do they do? What do they look like? How do they interact with the church and others?
In my kidmin, I set up 4 milestones that I wanted every kid to pass by the time they graduated from my ministry. You can read more about them here, but they are salvation, baptism, baptism in the Holy Spirit, and serving.
So, to create those, I asked myself, when a fifth grader enters youth, what should they do? I knew I wanted them saved and baptized in water. I knew I wanted them contributing to the church by serving. And since I’m Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination, I wanted them to be at least exposed to speaking in tongues and the other works of the Holy Spirit.
Once I had that picture, I could describe it to my lead team and then work together to build a ministry that facilitates that vision. They had great ideas and helped shape the full picture, but it had to start with me. Otherwise, they would have come with their own direction, and it would have been 10 times harder to align everyone to the same goal.
But a goal is just one step. You need to mark how you know you’ll be successful, which is what we’ll cover next.
Define Your Wins
I’ve talked about this before, but your team needs to know if they’re winning. No one wants to be on the losing team. Your wins are your scoreboard. They help everyone know where you’re doing great and where you’re losing.
Having an overall vision is great, but that may be a bridge too far. Your wins act as stepping stones to make sure you get to the end goal. They answer the how question of your vision.
You want to see kids get baptized? How do you make that happen? What event, program, or conversation do you need to make happen to accomplish that goal?
You say you want kids to serve. Then ask the same questions. For me, I started a baptism class and kids’ lead team. Then I tracked those numbers to make sure kids were actually doing them.
In my current role, I’m learning every week what’s working and what’s not. Each activity, program, and outreach initiative is in service to the vision I set at the beginning of the year, but I’m not sure exactly how to get there. So, I’m going slow, testing things, and seeing what works. If it doesn’t, I move on. If it does, I dive in.
You can have the perfect vision, but your wins and how you measure them can change as you try to achieve it. That’s ok. Just keep track of what’s happening because that which gets measured gets celebrated. And that which is celebrated gets repeated.
So, look at your vision and think about how you’re going to get there. What needs to happen to facilitate your ideal end goal? How can you measure your success to make sure you’re on the right track?
After you have a few written out, take them to your lead team, your pastor, and some trusted parents and ask them what they think. They’ll be able to help you refine your thinking and point out any potential pitfalls.
Once you get all the wins mapped out that will accomplish your vision, it’s time to communicate it to your people. That’s where this post comes in.
Setting and communicating your vision is essential to leading your ministry. It will take time, creativity, and collaboration to settle on the right one for your ministry. As I said in the beginning, you need to bathe each step in prayer. God knows where He wants your ministry to go and He will guide your creation process. Trust Him. Try new things. Get everyone on the same page. Who knows where your ministry will take you?
As the leader of your ministry, people are looking to you to set the direction for your ministry. That direction may have come from your pastor or leadership, but it’s your job to communicate it to your team.