I’ve read more books on leadership in 2025 than I have in the past few years combined. Partly because my “coach” assigned them and partly because I need help. Leadership is complicated and the larger our church becomes the more complicated it is. Our mission is easier to talk about than our vision because our mission is assigned by Jesus. We might word it differently than other local churches, but we all exist to make disciples, or, as we like to say, “To Develop Followers of Jesus for Life.” The way followers are developed includes Word and worship, life together in prayer, knowing and obeying Jesus, serving others and reaching others with the gospel. The components disciple-making are always the same. Vision, however, is more complicated because Vision has a context. Our context includes our location, our make-up as a church, our community and its needs, our specific niche among the local churches of this area etc. Knowing our mission keeps us on track but having a vision gets us moving. But, a vision will not get us moving without strategy and strategy never leaves a piece of paper without implementation. What we need as a church is a shared vision, a shared strategy and a shared implementation of those ideas. Without that we could end up busy in ten different directions, or worse, frozen in our mission with no vision! This Sunday I hope to explain this more fully as we prepare to start a new year.