Archive for February, 2014

6 Guidelines to Follow in Your Vision Casting

VisionCasting

People will rally to support your vision when you cast it before them effectively. The big question is: How do you do it?

Many pastors and spiritual leaders work through the processes of their church or organization; however, they struggle sharing the vision with the masses, enlisting their support. Today, I want to provide you with six guidelines to follow in your vision casting.

1. Cast it clearly.

The most important thing a leader can be is clear. Therefore, when God has given you a vision, share it with others clearly. Are you providing clarity in your leadership?

2. Cast it simply.

If you want people to grasp your vision, keep it simple. So often, complexity absolutely destroys the ability to embrace a vision. While detail is important, limit how much detail you share; otherwise, people will get lost in your vision.

Just remember: what people do not grasp, they usually do not support. If you want them to come alongside of you with verbal, active, and even financial support, insure you cast the vision with extreme simplicity.

3. Cast it visually.

Technology is a friend to vision casting. Never has so much opportunity existed to get people excited about your vision. Brainstorm all the visual ways you can share your vision. People love to see where you want them to go. Show them!

4. Cast it biblically.

Tie your vision to how it fulfills reaching others for Jesus Christ. Tie your vision to how it makes disciples. Tie your vision to God’s Word, the Bible.

At Cross Church, I have always tied any vision to God’s Word and reaching other people. Our people have always embraced the vision when they see how it is tied to God’s Word.

5. Cast it creatively.

Ask God for insight into how you can share the vision with people creatively. You can even gather a small group of people to help you brainstorm on creative ways to effectively share your vision.

I believe one of the important things in sharing the vision creatively, is sharing the vision in multiple ways. Different people will respond to the vision in different ways.

6. Cast it enthusiastically.

Passionate enthusiasm always attracts people to a better future. Leaders must be passionate. A leader cannot expect people to follow them unless they are overflowing with enthusiasm.

One of the saddest things I observe in the lives of pastors and staff members of churches is their lack of enthusiasm. Check your enthusiasm level. Be excited about your calling. Be enthusiastic about what God is doing. Cast your vision enthusiastically.

When you follow these guidelines

When you follow these guidelines in your vision casting, people will follow your vision. In fact, they may even run to your vision with enthusiasm. Lead on.

Yours for the Great Commission,

Ronnie W. Floyd

Hope Found

Last week, we considered what it is like to be without hope. As followers of Jesus, it is our responsibility to continuously point people to the hope that is in Jesus Christ.

False Remedies

We live in a time when all kinds of false hopes are offered as solutions to real problems. In the Spring 2014 unit of Bible Studies for Life, Pete Wilson explains, “We live in a culture that floods us with remedies. We try to mask our ‘lives of quiet desperation’ (to borrow from Thoreau) with pharmaceutical remedies, religious practices, a change in lifestyle, or a calendar full of activities. We can try to mask our need, but we can’t remove it.”1 Like placebos in place of antibiotics, there are plenty of false, ineffective hopes.

The ministry of Jesus on this earth was a ministry of hope. Whether healing people (Matthew 8:1-9), forgiving people (John 8:2-11), or teaching His followers about the kingdom of God, Jesus exuded hope. Real hope. Jesus was and is the hope of Israel and the world. It is little wonder the Apostle Paul related the mystery of salvation to the hope found in Christ: “God wanted to make known among the Gentiles the glorious wealth of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”2

When we run to the false remedies offered in culture, we receive the worst of all assurances: false hope. False hope is not bad only because the object of the hope is weak, but also because we are deceived into thinking we have real hope. We stop looking for real hope since false hope has settled our hearts and minds.

There is hope for you

What are areas of your life where you need hope? Marriage? Parenting? Ministry? Education? Friendships? Never allow any one of those to become the object of your eternal hope. Temporary solutions never build eternal hope. Look to Jesus and Him alone so that your hope, as the hymn says, will be “built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.”

If you have not yet checked out Bible Studies for Life, I want to encourage you to do so. It is a biblically grounded, ongoing Bible study. It provides practical application in every session so those who use it are not left with head knowledge only. Click here to get more information on the unit studies, and here to friend Bible Studies for Life on Facebook.

Yours for the Great Commission,

Ronnie W. Floyd

Senior Pastor, Cross Church
General Editor, Bible Studies for Life

1– Bible Studies for Life, Let Hope In, by Pete Wilson
2– Colossians 2:27, HCSB