The Fourth C
“If you want your members to catch your vision, you will need to tell them that vision seven times, seven different ways.” That was the advice that my first capital campaign consultant gave me way back in the 20th century. With your members getting blasted with over 3,000 marketing messages daily, it’s even more true today. How can you get your vision heard above the roar of everything else? I will show you how in this Coach, entitled The Fourth C.
Let’s review a few things about vision. First, what do we mean by vision? Vision answers the question, “Where are you going?” I believe the vision flows from the pastor’s heart into the church’s leadership and then to the membership. To accomplish this, you must use what I call The 3 Cs of Vision Casting – When it comes to your vision:
- Make it clear – Do your members clearly understand what you are attempting to do?
- Keep it concise – Donors have two questions: does this make sense, and can you pull it off?
- Cast it compellingly – The most important thing is to make your vision matter in the hearts of your members.
The 3 Cs of Vision depend upon The Fourth C—Communication. In nearly every feasibility study I did for a church leading up to a capital campaign, one of the key discoveries was members’ accusation that the church leadership failed to communicate properly. When I would share that with the staff, they would point out some sermon, newsletter, social media post, or whatever to prove they have been communicating. How could both be true? The seven times, seven different ways principle is, I think, the best answer.
Without looking it up, can you tell me what the second point of your sermon three months ago was? You can’t, can you? If you can’t remember that, how do you expect your members to remember the vision you cast six months before you launched a capital campaign? They won’t. Vision casting is like pouring water into a pot with holes.
Has the vision that you have cast to your members leaked out? As a pastor, once a year, I would preach a sermon about the vision God had given me for my church. I called it my state of the church message. I would lay out what was ahead for us in the next year, casting a vision that I thought was compelling and, most of all, God-sent. I would wonder in May why the church did not understand what we were to be about. I heard a pastor correctly nail it a few years back when he said, “Vision leaks!” My vision-casting sermon had probably leaked out the second they got to the cafeteria for Sunday dinner.
Vision casting cannot be one Sunday a year or even the Sunday of launching the campaign. Because vision leaks, we must repeatedly remind our members where we believe God has us going and how they can get on board. Vision, when it comes to stewardship, is the main driver of why people give. So, if your vision pot is leaking, you can be assured that any capital campaign will suffer as a result. So,
Communicate, communicate, communicate! Then, communicate the vision some more!
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Mark Brooks – The Stewardship Coach
mark@acts17generosity.com
OnlineGiving.org, the leading online giving processor in America, sponsors my writing. Find out more about their services at https://www.onlinegiving.org/.