Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create Movement. While the subtitle is a bit of a turn off – yet another ‘how to’ I was thinking – it does not do the book justice at all. Church Unique does not present a model to be replicated. It presents processes for discovery, discernment, and articulation of culture and ‘corporate grace.’

This week I’m going to dialog with the book. These posts won’t be a full review. It will be more of a conversation.

The book is written to challenge leaders to find their ‘church unique’ – to live a vision that creates a stunningly unique, movement-oriented church.

One of the books strongest and most helpful features is its approach. It is not primarily academic so it doesn’t just present theory. Most helpfully, it doesn’t just present conclusions based off of surveys or data. As the author states:

‘If I write a survey and send it out to three hundred “effective churches,” I can relatively easily develop my framework for “ten habits of effective churches”…If I then take this to your church, I will evaluate your work on the basis of this predetermined criteria. This process quickly leads to a scorecard of what you are doing well and what you are not doing well. Once I dole out your B plusses and C minuses, what one conclusion have I left with you? That you must work on your weaknesses of course. The problem with this is simple. If your primary focus, or paradigm for effectiveness, is trying to enhance your limitations, you will end up worse off than when you started. You will be immensely more effective if your focus is on discovering and developing your strengths.’

Can I get an amen?! The evaluation of ‘ministry effectiveness’ based off of ‘effective’ churches is inherently flawed. That evaluation criteria does not honor the contextualized, localized, and authentic expression of God in a particular community of faith.

By encouraging local churches to mimic ‘effective churches’ what we often do is quell the local church’s ability to creatively express the life of faith in her particular community because we are too busy trying to copy and paste models from the Chicago suburbs or from California that have ‘produced’ desired results. Yet we too often forget that those ‘effective’ models were born out of a process of rigorous discovery. What Church Unique rightly highlights is the power of the process.

Or as Will Mancini, the author, more eloquently states:

Leaders in the vortex of a “vision vacuum” clamor for the right tools, programs, and resources to propel their church forward in lieu of discovering better ways to direct leadership energy. The result is a massive cloning and a glut of photocopied vision.

The remedy?

A better way of leadership includes the disciplines of careful observation, vibrant imagination, and demanding collaboration that forge a unique vision based of what God is uniquely doing in each church’s unique context…The answer is having a vision that oozes, that is original, organic, zeroed in and extravagant. When leaders start thinking clearly, engaging locally, focusing redemptively, and risking boldly, their church becomes an irresistible influence. It becomes a church that prevails not because it is ‘purpose-driven’ but because it is purposeful.

I really appreciate this method. Rightfully recognizing that every church is unique because it is comprised of people who are unique and finds itself in a context that is unique allows Mancini a helpful platform to remind the reader that copying ministries or modeling best practices is not preferred. Why? Because they are unique to the congregation and leadership where they originated. They are not unique to the congregation and leadership where they are attempting to be implemented.

In part one, Mancini continues to deconstruct how the last two decades of approaching vision have helped to create a ‘vision vacuum.’ He is particularly skilled at this. We’ll get there tomorrow.

 Troy Hochstetler - To Will One Thing