Jorge Acevedo
Yesterday afternoon we had the pleasure of learning from Jorge Acevedo, the pastor of Grace Church (Grace United Methodist Church) in Cape Coral, FL. Unfortunately we were not in Cape Coral, but in Wilmore where it has been below freezing for a week straight. Jorge worked with Dick Wills (the author of Waking to God's Dream), until he was appointed to Grace. In nine and a half years since his arrival the church has grown from 300 to over 2000 in worship attendance. In his presentation he shared seven principles he believes have helped him lead his church: 1) Be honest your about your current reality, 2) Picture a preferred future, 3) Practice the genius of the "and" not the tyranny of the "or" 4) Trust your gut, 5) Discern what your job will be in the church before other decide it for you, 6) Determine what hills are worth dying on, 7) Don't stop in Jerusalem, remember we are also called to Judea, Samaria, and into the ends of the earth.
One of the interesting discussions we had was about vision, or picturing a preferred future. Jorge stated that vision comes through a leader, and is not best done through a collective process within the church. We then asked, would the vision for the church been different if you had gone to a different church? He answered no, because the vision is born inside of the leader, and when shared with a church will (hopefully) awaken the same vision inside of the church people. What do you think? Is vision given by God into the leader, or does it come from God through a process where leaders and followers come and discern/receive the vision together?
posted by Rob @ 11:06 AM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
Welcome back, Rob. When I first saw the title of your post, I thought you and Crystal might have decided on the name for your next child: Jorge Acevedo Couch. It's got a nice ring to it!
I think in the American church we work really hard to make the church democratic, and so, therefore, we feel that everyone has to be involved and has to have equal voice. From a biblical perspective, we don't see many committee meetings that discern how to work with what God was doing. It seems the recurring pattern is for an individual to be raised up (Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Isaiah, Jesus, Peter, Paul, etc.) that had a vision or new understanding from God, and they worked relentlessly to bring that vision to reality. In fact, I think we see several places (the book of Acts, for starters) where groups tried to work on building or fulfilling vision together and it never seemed to work.
If I'm trusting my gut (which I hear I should do), I think Jorge is right.
I agree with you Nolan. However, I will soon post a bit about a meeting we had with Alan Hirsch who is a church development person in Australia who has this take:
"its one of the core tasks of leadership to help the community to dream again. It is a disturbing trait of the more gung ho Christian leader today that he (usually male) is the sole visionary and the people are the mere receivers of the vision and must adhere to it because of the position of the leader in the organization."
I think there is probably a dynamic via media. I am Methodist afterall.
The community can decide as long as I came up with the idea.
I'm glad that at least two people occassionally read my blog. It feels a little less futile.
I think there are some words that should be more clearly defined here. Vision, dreaming, and ideas are not interchangeable.
I agree with you, Rob, that the church does need to rediscover the practice of dreaming. However, I don't think teaching people to dream, brianstorm, and come up with ideas is the same as having a vision.
Vision (and I'm thinking primarily of Revelation and Peter's vision in Acts) is deeper than an idea or a shot of creativity. Vision is a soul stirring concept or idea. It is the ability to see a new reality that is separate and removed for current constraints.
There are things that as called, set apart leaders we do, and part of that is receiving vision. We live with a soul-longing for something more. There are others within the Church that have these gifts, but I don't think that everyone who sits around a table with a piece of scratch paper will come to this.
When vision is in place, there is room for lots of creativity, ideas, and dreaming about how to fulfill vision. When vision (i.e., that deep soul-stirring new reality) is left to the development of the masses. It isn't the same.
I think.
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