Pioneering a Church Plant – Vision “Communicating vision”

"twenty hospitable families in different parts of the city are all we need to start twenty churches."

#27

Speak out your vision as clearly as you can define it, as often as possible. Those who you are gathering should have no doubt about what it is they are buying into, and they will see that everything you are doing is building towards that vision. Some will have faith for the whole thing and can see it complete. Others however will only be able to take hold of smaller parts of the whole, so wherever possible break it down into manageable chunks. For example, in Manchester, twenty hospitable families in different parts of the city are all we need to start twenty churches.
Steve Nicholson says that when the church planter is talking about vision he is describing where they want to end up. “Vision is like a painting: it needs to have word pictures, metaphors and stories that illustrate the vision and which capture people’s imagination.”
He goes on to illustrate how John Wimber communicated vision. “John Wimber did not just stand up in front of people and give a tick list of his vision; he would tell them this story, that was often told in the early days of Vineyard:

As he was riding in a cab one day on his way to the airport, the cab driver learned that he was a pastor. The cab driver spent the rest of the trip talking about how bad the church was – how it didn’t help anybody, how it made people feel guilty, how it was always after people’s money. Finally at the end of the cab ride, as they were pulling Wimber’s luggage out of the trunk, Wimber looked at the cab driver and said, ‘OK, tell me this. If Jesus were to have a church, what do you think it would look like?’ The cab driver stopped for a moment, thought about it, and then looked at Wimber and said, ‘if God really had a church it would feed the poor, heal the sick, and it would not charge you money for reading the book.’ At that moment God gripped Wimber’s heart with a vision for what the church ought to look like – and it seized the hearts of those Wimber told the story to as well, when he wanted to communicate his heart and vision for the church. The problem is many pastors get bored in telling their story, so they quit telling it, and then they wonder why their church quits growing. Telling your story is a major part of vision casting and leadership.”
Speaking out vision is creationary. Declaring at the very start of your first home group that you will be multiplying to two groups and will train leaders to take on the second group, will help that very thing to come about. As you declare it and pray it out, you impart faith to people.
As you begin the process of stepping out in faith to see the vision realised, it needs to be earthed with realistic faith goals communicated within the context of the vision as a whole. There is a saying in Africa - “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!” and in Manchester - “How do we see 10,000 saved and added? One at a time!”