The Church needs Visionary Thinkers

"I need time to think , to make mistakes and recognize them"

William Deresiewiez “What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the army - a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People in other words, with vision.”

I am incredible challenged and motivated by these words. As I now find myself leading a church in one of the great urban regions of Manchester. These are mainly poorer and under-churched micro towns, merging into one another in one mass of houses. They offer a large mission field where fresh thinking is needed. There seem to be many and often conflicting ideologies about how this should be done.

Small house churches are one route often advocated. Bussing people out to better-resourced suburban venues is another. Incarnational is the buzzword used for another strategy. This is where people move into a deprived area and live among the people. Over the years all of these, and other variations on the theme, have been tried with mixed success. 

William Deresiewiez: “I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, take me by surprise. And often even that idea doesn’t turn out to be very good. I need time to think about it, too, to make mistakes and recognize them, to make false starts and correct them, to outlast my impulses, to defeat my desire to declare the job done and move on to the next thing.”

To be continued

The Church needs Visionary Thinkers

William Deresiewiez “What we don’t have, in other words, are thinkers. People who can think for themselves. People who can formulate a new direction: for the country, for a corporation or a college, for the army - a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things. People in other words, with vision.”