Upper and Lowercase Vision

For an introduction to this series, check out my article The Preferred Future (or Why I Get up at 5am) at WorshipMinistry.com

I want to make a distinction between two kinds of vision. (And this distinction is somewhere between "thinking out loud" and a working hypothesis. So if you don't agree, that's OK. In six months, I may not either.)

When it comes to vision, I think there’s the big, almost "capital-V vision" that gets put in the hearts of people by God. Nehemiah’s vision of rebuilding the wall would be an example of that. That kind of Big-V vision is something that I can’t act on right away or it’d be ruined. It needs be developed and refined. I need be developed and refined. Andy Stanley’s book Visioneering* will help guide you through the process of a Big-V vision.

Then there’s what I would call the "lowercase-v vision" that simply sees a problem and sees a solution to that problem. (And the people without vision see problems to solutions– but that’s an issue for later.) A lot of the building blocks spelled out in Visioneering are the same for little-v vision – just on a smaller scale. And it seems like, for me, operating within this realm of small-v that God starts to instill a Big-V vision.

Vision, big or small, at its most basic definition, is a preferred future. And the path between vision and our current reality is one part strategy and planning, one part “continual course-correction,” and two parts getting off our keisters and moving towards it.

Speaking of keisters, yours might feel like it’s being kicked right now. Some people are not future or vision oriented. That’s OK. Some people are so big-picture/future oriented that they can hardly function in the real world. Some are so tied to the practicality of real world that it’s difficult to see the big picture. The good news is we need all of us to make this work. (Of course, the bad news is, we need all of us to make this work.) If you have a hard time seeing thinking about vision and future and you’re not sure why, spend $15 and buy StrengthsFinder 2.0* book and take the assessment. It will show you your top five strengths and explain them in way that lightbulbs will be going on all over your brain. It will also help you understand what areas are NOT your strengths and how to work with people who have those.

In the next post in this series, we'll use a simple exercise to start developing a vision for our worship team.

*Full disclosure - affiliate links for Amazon.