It has been said that vision without action is a daydream, and that action without vision is a nightmare. I have never met a leader who wants to fly without the twin engines of leadership: vision and action. Yet, we all have confronted the great dilemma of how these two relate. More specifically, leaders constantly wrestle with the question of how vision crystallizes into reality. What must we do to translate a God-sized dream into meaningful progress within the church?

Unfortunately, too many church leaders get caught up trying to encourage action when the cause may better be served by developing a more clear vision. Once you’ve successfully defined the vision, action becomes immediate, inevitable and unavoidable. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first, let’s explore how the process usually plays out.

Several factors amplify the challenges that arise when defining how vision reality. Let’s consider two. First is the diverse “wiring” and gifting of church leaders. Some are entrepreneurs who thrive on creating chaos in order to seize the next dream. Others are managers who create order to effectively metabolize steps toward the dream within the organization. Clearly, ministry progress requires both roles, making teamwork a crucial aspect of the “vision to reality” equation.

A second consideration is the change-tolerance of people within the organization. Some folks adopt early, while others do so painstakingly late. Some are change junkies, while others are status-quo addicts. In keeping with a digestive metaphor, some congregations have fast metabolisms, while others resemble a bear in hibernation. Leaders often identify their churches in nautical terms – is “turning the ship” in your church like driving a speedboat or an ocean liner?

As important as these two factors are, I believe they are just two aspects of a numbingly long list of leadership topics that call out for our attention. Book after book and article after article, leaders reach for tools, ideas and practices to beef-up their horsepower. But what if the very volume of resources and ideas out there is actually distracting leaders from the real challenge of translating vision to reality? What if, in the clamor to put more tools in the toolbox, one has missed finding the keys to a better one?

This article is about those keys. ...