Theology Blog

In many ways I consider myself to be a visionary, but there are also ways in which I do not think that I am much of a visionary. I think about vision a lot, especially when I have been at a leadership conference like the one I was at recently. There is plenty of mandate for vision in the church, certainly in the scriptures and beyond. Much of the emphasis on vision in the church in the past couple decades seems to have come from the corporate or business world. That is not a bad thing necessarily as the church in North America at least had become to institutional, too internal, too focused on function. Every ministry I am a part of has a vision of some sorts, whether it is a good vision or even a vision that is well lived out is a matter of perspective. As of late, I have been pondering the theological nature of vision. What is a healthy theology of vision? What role does vision play in your theological understanding of life, of ministry or of the organizations/institutions that you are a part of? Without vision, the people will perish, but beyond that what is the nature of vision and how are we to understand it theologically?