Happy President’s Day.  Happy Feast of the Chair of St. Peter. (celebrated tomorrow.)

When we think Presidents and Popes, we think vision and how well they as leaders stuck to implementing vision. When I think of leadership in ministry and setting and maintaining vision, the following quote from Andy Stanley’s Making Vision Stick always comes back to haunt me. 

If you are in ministry, listen closely to the questions people ask.  Listen closely to prayer requests.

If your ministry vision centers on engaging unbelieving people with the message of Christ, but ninety percent of the prayer requests from your leadership and staff are about sick people, your vision is slipping.  We pray for what we are most burdened for.  If nobody in my leadership circle requests prayer for someone who is far from God, that’s a big red flag for me.  That’s a definite vision-slippage indicator.  On more than one occasion, I’ve called a time-out to remind our leadership that we are not a hospital.  I’m all for praying for the sick.  But if that’s the only group we are burdened to pray for, then perhaps we are the ones who need prayer. Perhaps the vision has slipped.

All right, please don’t beat me up in the comments about the need to pray for the sick…  I get that (and I’m pretty confident Andy Stanley does, as well.)

But, when our concerns become seemingly nostalgic (hindsight) regarding who is missing or gone, can we really be about vision (foresight) about who is yet to come.  While respecting the past, a leader’s challenge is Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow  And… isn’t that what ministry with youth is all about?