4 Ways Church Leaders Can Turn Vision into Real Lasting Change

The way I see it, there is one determining factor when it comes to evaluating leaders.

All of us have great ideas of how things should be — what our churches should look like and how they should change.

However only some of us are actually able to implement these ideas. This is the ultimate scorecard for leaders. Only some leaders are able to create and sustain real and lasting change.

By nature, I’m a visionary. I love big picture thinking. I really enjoy dreaming about how we should do things.

But, I’ll be honest, up until very recently, I’ve had a hard time actually sustaining change in my ministry and in my church. The bad news is that I’ve seen a lot of my ideas fail. The good news is that I’ve learned what it takes to actually drive change in people and organizations.

My assumption is that you have an idea of what needs to happen in your church or your ministry. Most likely, you have vision. But do you know how to make it happen? Can you take your church from here to there?

What I want to share in this post is a simple framework for creating and sustaining real and lasting change.

1. This Is It (Say It)

For our ministry, the change we are trying to create this year involves our volunteers. We know through research and experience that our student ministry rises and falls on small group leaders who are bought in, growing and committed. We call these volunteers invested leaders.

Here’s the question that is driving our vision: What if every volunteer was an invested leader?

How much more impactful would our ministry be. So, this became our goal: every leader is an invested leader.

The first phase of this project became creating language around invested leaders and then using that language constantly.

Basically what we were doing is saying, “This is it!” over and over again. By saying “This is it!” repeatedly, we created an atmosphere in which everyone involved understood what is that we are trying to accomplish.

So, how do you actually implement your vision? How do you drive change? Say it. Begin with “This is it!” in a way that everyone can understand and see.

2. There It Is (Show It)

It’s one thing to create language that everyone can understand, but it another thing entirely to provide real life examples that people can watch. The second phase of implementing our invested leaders strategy is to say “there it is” over and over again by telling stories.

Things like:

“Let me tell you about an invested leader.”
“Let me show you an example of an invested leader.”

We added an element in our staff meetings in which we tell stories about volunteers who demonstrate the qualities of invested leaders.

This helps everyone on the team understand not only the language of what we’re looking for but also visual models of what it looks like.

So, how do you actually create movement toward your vision and move people and your ministry from here to there? Provide examples that say, “There it is!” This can be people, other ministries, or really anything that provides a model or tells the story of what you are aiming for.

3. That's Not It (Confront It)

As it turns out, people don’t always do what you want them to.

Shocker. I know.

Sometimes this happens because they don’t understand the vision and sometimes because they don’t want to.

Also, not every program that the church currently offers fits with the vision of what you’re trying to accomplish. Because of this, it’s absolutely crucial that we, as leaders, be willing to say, “That’s not it.”

It’s not enough to create language around the vision and provide models. We must also be willing to confront and remove what doesn’t sync with the vision.

For me, this is where I failed to lead in the early days of my ministry. By nature, I’m a non-confrontational peacemaker. I don’t love conflict. Because of this, I tolerated behavior, programs and systems that went against my vision.

What I learned is that it’s impossible to drive and sustain meaningful change without “That’s not it!” conversations.

One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned in ministry is that it’s less painful to engage in, “That’s not it” conversations than to avoid them.

What I mean is that the level of frustration that comes with unfulfilled vision is far more painful than carefully confronting behavior or killing programs that don’t sync with the vision.

4. Perseverance (Stick With It)

Lastly, driving lasting change requires perseverance.

People and organizations often respond to course changes slowly. It’s my belief that God-given vision sometimes goes unfulfilled because leaders give up.

Resistance doesn’t always mean that the vision isn’t God-given but rather that we need to push through, stay faithful and stay the course.

Wrap Up

To summarize, I believe that implementing vision and driving change isn’t actually all that complicated. It doesn’t require an MBA but it does require tenacity and focus. Narrow the focus to “this is it,” “there it is” and “that’s not it” and I believe you will begin to see movement.

If you have any additional thoughts on how to implement vision in a lasting, sustainable way, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.