Blogging pastor Chuck Warnock offers some thoughts to chew on about vision and especially as it relates to the small church. He pastors a church not too far from Martinsville.

• Vision can replace mission as the focus of the church.
• Vision often is the product of one person’s thinking — the pastor.
• Vision is an ego-feeder.
• Vision often does not connect to the church’s shared memory and history.
• Vision is usually about how a church can be bigger, not better.

I encourage you to read the article to see it in context. I love how he finishes the article.

Okay, so I’m vision-bashing a little bit here. But I’m also learning that the small church has a story, a history, a shared memory, and that the future of God is among the people of God. Does this mean we just all drift along like leaves in a stream? No, but it does mean that we are constantly in conversation within the community of faith about what God is doing, where God is taking us, and how we are participating in the mission of God. And that conversation is not a monologue.

It has given me something to think about.