Tag Archive for: vision

Casting vision is one of the core responsibilities of a leader. Being able to translate the mission of who you are as a church and communicate where you’re headed is what inspires unity and purpose throughout your congregation. When the vision is understood, everyone can work together towards that future.

Casting a vision for your congregation gives clarity of where your church is headed, provides inspiration about the future, and unites everyone around what your church is doing. This can feel like a daunting task at times, though, can’t it?

Here are some of our favorite tips on casting vision for your congregation:

1. Make Sure You Have a Clear Mission

Vision starts with mission. Vision is about how you’re accomplishing your purpose even better in the future. So if your unique mission is a little fuzzy, set aside some time to answer this question: Why does our church exist in our community at this time?

That mission is the core of who you are as a congregation, and who you are in the context of a larger surrounding community.

Your vision is the expansion of that mission. It is the place that God is calling you to that will extend that mission in even greater ways. Vision is the picture you can paint for the people you lead of where you all are headed, together.

2. Dream and Plan With Your Team

Vision clarity starts with your core team of staff and leadership. Before you consider casting vision for your congregation, make sure you have a plan in place on how you will accomplish it. Your team will be able to provide feedback, identify ways you can practically accomplish the vision, and help you discover the pieces of the puzzle that will help the church move forward effectively.

Let the vision breathe, change, and expand as you share what God has placed on your heart with your team!

3. Connect Exciting Vision Initiatives Back to the Mission

It’s always exciting to share vision initiatives with your congregation! But we can forget to connect these back to the mission, which is who we are and why we exist as a church.

It’s important that exciting new goals don’t get communicated as goals for the sake of goals. By sharing how new vision initiatives connect back to your mission, you can ensure your congregation remembers your greater mission and how this particular initiative fulfills your church’s purpose.

4. Remind People of the Vision and Mission Often

Perhaps you’ve heard the famous leadership principle: “Vision leaks.” This is very true! Vision isn’t something you can set once and then forget—this is something we have to consistently nurture.

In order to do that, we need to be talking about our vision and mission often! Doing this not only keeps it at the forefront of your congregations’ minds, but will help them actively look for opportunities to move towards that vision in their daily life.

5. Let Yourself Be Excited!

Casting vision is something to get excited about. God is at work within you, in your church, and in your community! Let yourself dream and get excited about how He is at work.

When you lead from a place of excitement, it becomes contagious. This is one of the core ways of how your congregation can “catch” the vision and how your church can become eager to move forward in unity.


Your congregation needs to be aware of your mission and vision. They need to be connected to the future goal. Without that connection, it’s like running a relay race with only half of your team showing up to run! We hope these tips have inspired you to cast vision in a way and support the people you lead in getting involved in the work God has called you to accomplish.

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With the start of a new year, it can seem like everyone is setting a resolution to lose weight, break a bad habit, or start a new hobby. It may feel like setting goals in January is more of a fad that we quickly forget once February arrives. 

However, there is value to setting goals during the start of a new year that shouldn’t be ignored.

Whether this is a new year or just a new season at your church, today we want to share a few goal-setting principles every church leader should keep in mind when setting goals:

1) Setting goals is an important part of spiritual leadership.

As a leader in your church, people will naturally look to you for guidance and clarity in what direction the church is taking. You have a noble calling to lead and shepherd these people toward Christ and to reach the surrounding community. But this doesn’t just happen. It requires an intentional plan. As such, you should take time to set goals for yourself, your church, and how you will reach others.

In the end, it is God that will bring fruit to our efforts but it’s our job to partner with Him by creating a plan, setting goals, working the plan, and then seeing how God uses those efforts.

2) Don’t just make a to-do list; cast a vision.

It’s easy to set a long list of things to do, but that isn’t actually the point of setting church goals. Not to mention, you’d have to create unique to-do lists for each area of your ministry. Instead, you should focus on casting a vision. Help people see how the goals that the church is setting are actually helping the ministry move towards the overall vision.

This is an opportunity to inspire rather than just inform.

3) Don’t be afraid to reach for the stars, but make sure your goals are still realistic.

Michael Hyatt has said, “You can’t get where you want to go unless you start with where you are.” When setting goals, it’s hard to find that middle ground. We want to be ambitious and set near-impossible goals. Or we want to be realistic and don’t dream big enough.

A good goal will stretch us beyond what we are capable of, and will require God to show up in order to achieve it, but it remains in the realm of possibilities. “By next year, our church will take our attendance from 500 to 5,000” is an example of a near-impossible goal (in that timespan).

4) Be sure your goals are SMART.

If you aren’t familiar with the acronym of SMART goals, here’s a quick breakdown:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound

The purpose of this acronym is to give you a tool to not only plan, but also achieve your goals. It’s one thing to say, “We want to reach our community.” It’s another thing to say, “By December 31, we will see 100 new connect cards filled out by first-time guests.” One is time-bound and measurable, and the other is not.

Utilize SMART church goals in your planning!

5) Check your progress.

Just like those that make New Year’s Resolutions, if you don’t make a plan to follow through on your goals, you will tend to forget about them. The purpose of goal-setting is to keep you accountable to the mission as you move through the year.

Take the time now to set up times to review how you are doing with each goal. Make a reminder in your calendar now so you can look back at your goals and continually track your progress.

Goal-setting can feel like a heavy responsibility and a lot of work. The truth is that it is both of those things! It takes time and effort to set meaningful goals for your church and that is not something that should be taken lightly. The effort is well worth it! 

So this month, feel free to dream big, set goals, cast vision, and get excited about how God will show up to help you meet those goals. Setting goals is a necessary part of being a church leader, and you are equipped to dream about a potential future to pursue alongside your God.

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