In literature about church leadership today, the term “vision” is inescapable. The rector (or senior pastor) must “cast a vision” for the parish; the vestry (or elder board) must “safeguard the vision” of the parish; every parish needs a “vision statement”; bishops and synods must be “visionary.” I think we all understand what is meant by such language—an institution that lacks a clear sense of its identity and mission will drift, make incoherent decisions, or perhaps abandon faithfulness and orthodoxy. Insisting on a vision, for this discourse, means insisting on a clarity of purpose and planning wisely for the future.
However, such language sits uncomfortably with biblical and historic understandings of the church. To make one perhaps banal point, the language of “casting a vision” nowhere appears in the church’s charter given in the Great Commission. The notion of a personalized, individual “vision statement” for a parish separate from the Great Commission and the Great Commandments sits oddly with universal commandments of Christ given in the Gospels. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find Christ admonishing his disciples to formulate “personal vision and mission statements,” nor does St. Paul in his epistles counsel the churches to “safeguard their vision.”
Perhaps the closest equivalent to contemporary language surrounding vision might be found in 2 Timothy 1: “But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you” (ESV). Note that what Timothy must safeguard here is not a vision arbitrarily conceived by St. Paul, still less by Timothy himself—it is rather a gift of faith entrusted to the church by Christ Jesus, formed into a pattern of sound words by St. Paul’s authoritative teaching, and entrusted to Timothy by the power of the Holy Spirit. While St. Paul admonishes Timothy to be vigilant and wise in safeguarding the holy calling of the Gospel, the content of what he must preserve is given to him, not conceived by himself. The metaphor is not one of vision but of preserving a trust.
Or consider statements like this, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together:
God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary idea of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christ with his demands, sets up his law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes first, an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.
For Bonhoeffer, a “vision” is a vicious distraction from the reality of Christian community. The visionary dreamer loves his vision more than the real people he has been placed in a membership with, and so his vision undermines contentment, compassion, and charity.
I understand that the language of “vision” in current church leadership discourse is not meant to suggest visionary dreaming of an ideal community, nor is it generally the language of a zealot determined to conform the church to his personal preferences. (For that kind of dreaming, you need to write a book describing your preferred style of church as an Option, complete with the patronage of your favorite saint.) “Vision” as ordinary church leaders describe it today is generally meant to capture a sense of common purpose, not a prideful ideal. It is meant to protect the church from mission drift that would carry it away from gospel faithfulness or purposeful decision-making. In this usage, the language of “vision” appears to be largely derived from contemporary business management practices and to reflect more than anything beliefs about how institutions function.
We should not blithely assume that this terminology from business management is spiritually neutral and available for use in church contexts. Whatever the intention, “vision” still carries semantic associations aligned with something more like Bonhoeffer’s use of the term, suggesting an arbitrary and consumeristic “brand identity.” If we follow a personal “vision,” our view of common purpose may owe more to the spirituality of capitalism, which rather than accepting reality tries to bend it to the brand’s or the consumer’s will. We will be tempted to articulate our church’s “vision” as that which makes us special, a market distinctive, rather than the gifts and calling of God. Such ideas have no place in a church committed to the real and historic call of Christ, which calls us to make ourselves less, not greater; which commissions us not to build a brand but to serve.
Now, individual parishes do still need language to describe their own distinctive identity. Though every church of Jesus Christ shares a common mission and purpose, individual parishes do have distinct identities that need to be safeguarded—particular liturgical traditions or missional emphases. A parish that just points to the Great Commission and Great Commandments without any individual elaboration risks allowing a lack of clarity in its individual purpose, leading to incoherent ministry. I have experienced such incoherence in my own church life, and the result was a church that seldom had any real rationale for why it did what it did. So we need some language for capturing a sense of what we now tend to call “vision,” a sense of purpose and identity. What language would better serve our turn?
Fortunately, we already have such language in use elsewhere in the church. In my Anglican tradition, like others, when a person is considering whether to enter into a work of ministry, we discuss “discernment,” a sense of “calling,” and even “vocation.” Rather than a personal “vision,” such language puts the matter in a properly theological key. The person who discerns a vocation is not creating a brand or articulating a unique “value proposition”—rather, he or she listens for the invitation of God to serve in a particular way. His or her identity and distinctive work are not self-created, as “vision” suggests, but a trust received from the Lord and discerned in the body of believers. A vocation isn’t infinitely malleable or subject to human will and purpose. It is humbly received, a matter of what is given rather than what is created. As such, a true vocation will always be oriented toward the real community, rather than provoking condemnation of the community like the visionary dreaming Bonhoeffer decries. As with St. Paul’s admonition to Timothy, a vocation is entrusted to us as a gift that we preserve for the good of the church and the world; it is not self-created for our own sense of identity or personal brand.
It is not such a stretch to extend the language of vocation from individuals to institutions such as parishes. After all, like an individual human person, a parish has a unique history, a particular home place, and specific gifts and resources provided by God. To use the language of “vocation” rather than “vision” for these unique qualities of the parish would better equip us to understand our work in the church as a matter of service rather than self-aggrandizement. It would position us to humbly receive the Lord’s calling for our life together rather than suggesting that we have a brand to build. More importantly, to speak of the “vocation” of a parish would chasten our idea of our purpose, yoking it to our God-given circumstances rather than imagining that we can forge our own destinies in pursuit of a vision we have created for ourselves.
I urge all church leaders, especially those in churches like mine with a robust theology of vocation, to replace church “vision statements” with “vocation statements.” (After that change is made, perhaps we could next have a conversation about the term “leadership.”) Replacing the language of “vision” with “vocation” would be a meaningful step to ensure that the language we use to describe our common life derives from a properly Christian idiom and not just from secular concepts of management or branding. If a “vision statement” is meant to safeguard our commitment to the Gospel, one crucial way to protect that commitment is to use language that is properly Christian.