I’ve served in a senior pastor role over 20 years and each year I’ve preached an annual vision sermon.

As I look back, though, I wonder how much Kingdom difference those sermons really made.

Pastors from large mega-churches that I’ve followed from afar encourage us to bring an annual  message. As a result, I’ve prioritized it as a necessary leadership tour do force upon which I thought the health, vitality, and future of my church depended. I had engrained into my leadership DNA that a vision message must include content (the what), the motivation (the why), and the inspiration (the impetus for everybody in the church to be moved to take on hell with a water pistol after listening to me for 30 minutes).

The kinds of vision messages I’ve brought have included these general themes.

• the I just got back from this great pastors’ conference and this is what we will do next year
• the I just read a great book on church growth and this is what we will do next year
• the I have no clue about what next year holds but I have to bring a vision message or else I’m not a good pastor
• the I have to fire up the church with this message because, well, we need firing up
• the I’ve come from a Mt. Sinai planning retreat and here is what God told me we’re to do next year
• and as I’ve gotten more mature the I humbly bring this before you as a word from God

The responses to my annual vision sermon have included…

• 100 people leaving the church the following year (after I attended Willow for the first time and decided we would be the Willow Creek of Atlanta; I’m not dissing Willow, I was simply too filled with myself when I brought that vision sermon)
• a phone call from a leader saying he was not motivated at all
• usually lower attendance on those days
• (more…)

When I was a kid, one of my favorite toys was an Etch A Sketch. If you’ve never played with one, it works like this. You turn the two white knobs in different directions to create a line drawing like the one in the picture. That was cool enough for us kids like me who lived in the pre-internet era. But the coolest part came when when you wanted to start a new drawing. A quick jiggle of the screen and the drawing would ‘magically’ disappear ready for a new picture.

What does an Etch A Sketch have to do with planning? It’s a phrase I coined during my recent trip to Nicaragua.

In six days our team held three 1-day training conferences in different locations in the country for over 325 pastors and their wives. Being a meticulous planner, I had created a well-designed schedule for each day. The only problem? My view of time didn’t sync with how the pastors and wives viewed it nor did it sync with how the three local pastors who sponsored the events viewed it.

I was literally forced to change our daily schedule every hour, sometimes as often as 5 times in an hour. For a recovering obcessive-compulsive, I was ticked. I had diligently prepared this schedule. We had lots to accomplish to finish at five each day. The speakers had prepared talks to teach. Our worship team had practiced songs to sing. But the people didn’t show up until anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half late. And they took really long breaks. Early on inside I was yelling, “What’s wrong with you Nicaraguans! Don’t you wear watches?”

But God graciously moderated my inner voice and attitude and I realized I could learn a lot from how the Nicaraguans treated time.

For me, time has always been a commodity I didn’t want to waste. I always felt that I waste time if I’m not always accomplishing some task or goal. I’ve also believed that people who are perpetually late aren’t stewarding their time wisely. Although the two previous statements are often true, the culture I’ve experienced in my five trips to Nicaragua has helped me become less ‘uptight’ if sometimes my time passes without any appreciable accomplishment.

I believe these Nicaraguan pastors, as a whole, value relationships over tasks, perhaps more than we do in the United States.

If you are a pastor, you are a busy guy or gal. I know because I am one. It seems there’s always more to do in ministry than time to do it.

But for me, I hope my Etch A Sketch planning experience will help me savor the relational moments that may show no immediate accomplishment. Perhaps Jesus had this thought in mind when he gently admonished Martha with these words.

… only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her. (Luke 10.42)

Related posts: Strategic Planning for Dummies

For more Help and Resources for Pastors, visit Pastor Stone’s main site.

What do you do when your plans get interrupted? Fume…fuss…cuss?

I tend to fume.

Recently two experiences interrupted my well laid-out plans. In the process, I learned a few simple life lessons.

Interruption #1

I’m taking a voice-over class in Chicago and I park in the same building where the class is held. The valet keeps the key and after the class (later that night), I retrieve my key from the security guard and drive home. Except this week. The guard couldn’t find my key. She called the boss and while he drove back to the building, I had some time to kill. For the next while, I was able to have a meaningful conversation with Faith about having a relationship with Christ. She didn’t trust Christ, but I believe her heart opened a bit. Eventually, the boss found my key and I made it home.

One redeemed interruption.

Interruption #2.

Two days later I prepared for my quarterly overnight planning retreat at a retreat center a few miles west of my home. Just before I left, I opened my MacBook Pro to send out an email. When I opened the lid … a black screen stared back. This happened two weeks prior and I thought is was a one-time glitch. Apparently not, though. Fortunately, the first time one of my staff guys was able to perform a convoluted fix because my re-booting, removing the battery, and screaming at my Mac didn’t work. But, he was now out-of-town. I checked with another staffer and he said he thought  he could fix it. He did. By the time he fixed it, though, I faced losing a half-day of my retreat. Plus, I had lost the file of my current sermon.

On my drive to the retreat center, I faced a choice, I could fume or pray. I choose the latter. Amazingly, that focused prayer time centered me and prepared my heart for the retreat, even though on the way a train stopped me and when I arrived the place was locked.

Another interruption redeemed.

Here are the 3 lessons I learned from those interruptions.

1. Life often seem like a series of interruptions punctuated by a few plans that get accomplished.
2. When interrupted, we all choose how we will respond.
3. When we respond with God’s grace, He will redeem even the most frustrating interruptions for His Glory and our benefit.

For more Help and Resources for Pastors, visit Pastor Stone’s main site.