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Double Vision

Written by Brian Zehr

Do you ever feel like you can “mostly” see?  One of my observations of reproducing church leaders is that the ability to see is often dependent on a second glance… or in some cases a second touch from God himself. 

In Mark 8 we read of Jesus giving sight.

23He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, "Do you see anything?" 24He looked up and said, "I see people; they look like trees walking around." 25Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

Why a second touch? Why spit? I don’t know. But I do know that sometimes we see clearly and sometimes it takes a second touch.

At our NewThing Gathering in May I noticed that two different types of sight are prevalent, the macro and the micro.

• Macro–vision is the ability to see the big picture of what a reproducing church is. Goals of church planting... dreams, schemes, new campuses, new leadership residents, new types of missional communities, WOW! 

• Micro-vision is the ability to see all of what it takes to make the macro a reality. Staffing, budgeting, meetings, marketing… blood, sweat and tears.

For us in NewThing, the macro is defined: reproduce leaders at all levels, reproduce artists, equip leaders, measure reproduction, have clear reproducing goals. Great stuff – clear – inspiring! But the micro is not so clear. Sometimes if we are honest, when we open our eyes and we see people; they look like trees walking around.

Maybe it is stating the obvious, but macro vision is FUN and, truth be told, it is a lot easier than the micro. The micro level of seeing what needs to be done and actually doing the specific tasks, can be hard, messy and is often avoided. So how do reproducing leaders in reproducing churches make sure they actually do the micro in order to accomplish the macro?

One simple clear action step: Invest in specific people – can’t get much more micro than that. Who are you investing in? Who are you developing and equipping? In its simplest form it looks like this:

• Pray. Go to church, walk around, pray that God shows you who you can invest in relationally and who can lead within His church.
• Ask. Initiate a conversation asking the person if they are willing and open to spend time regularly with you for the purpose of growth and future leadership.
  
• Meet. Begin to meet regularly with the person or form a small group with a few potential leaders.

The principle is this: Investing in potential leaders brings the macro-vision into reality. Without it everyone seems to look like trees.