A vision or a dream......you decide......

There is a natural follow-up to the two questions that I raised in my last post on the importance of having a ministry vision that is worth committing your life to see accomplished.  It is a simple question, "What steps do we need to take to make sure that this vision becomes a reality?"  You see, a vision without a plan is simply a dream. However, a God given ministry vision along with goals and a ministry plan born out of prayer and worked out in dependence on the Spirit of God can make a huge impact for the Kingdom of God.


Over the years I have seen a number of ministry visions die because they were in reality nothing more than dreams.  These ideas and opportunities were passionately held by ministry leaders, yet they weren't realized because there weren't "tracks to run on" in order to see the ministry vision move forward.  


The ReachGlobal Africa Division LeadTeam and I have been working over the past year to develop what we call a "Ministry Compass" that includes 10 Year Goals pointing toward our Vision Statement; 3 Year Goals that move us toward the 10 Year Goals; and 6 Month Tactical Plans that move us toward the 3 Year Goals.  In addition, each one of our 6 Month Tactical Plans have a name(s) beside them indicating who on our team is responsible to move it forward.  Everything has "line of sight" to the Vision Statement and our efforts are moving things toward the accomplishment of our overall 10 Year Goals.  Our team meets every 6 months to review our progress, evaluate our overall goals and set out the next 6 Month Tactical Plans.  This process is making a HUGE impact to help our vision not get stalled out and become simply a dream, but to truly make an eternal difference in the lives of people.


In the next several posts I will be sharing our 10 year goals and giving you some of the background behind our thinking in developing them.  Let me be very clear that these goals are born out of prayer and are being worked out in dependence on the Spirit of God.  We are convinced that unless the Lord of the church is guiding us and empowering us we won't see much of eternal value happen.  However, we believe that transformational things will start to happen when we are humbly listening to the Lord, making adjustments along the way as He leads, and depending on the empowering of His Spirit as we go.


Our Vision is to see the Gospel transform lives, communities and institutions across Africa by the power of God's Spirit!