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Principles of Effective Leadership - Lesson 17

Vision and Leadership (Part 2/2)

In this lesson, you will learn the importance of long term thinking and how it plays a crucial role in the visionary process. You will discover the Janus Effect, which emphasizes the value of learning from history in order to see into the future. By studying great visionaries like Nixon and Churchill, you will understand the significance of becoming a great historian. Additionally, engaging present realities effectively will enable you to lead into the future with confidence. The lesson will also explore future visionary thinking, including scenario thinking and adapting to technology and trends, to help you prepare for the ever-changing landscape of life and ministry.

John  Johnson
Principles of Effective Leadership
Lesson 17
Watching Now
Vision and Leadership (Part 2/2)

Lesson: Long Term Thinking

I. The Importance of Long Term Thinking

A. Visionary Process

B. The Janus Effect

II. Learning from History

A. Examples of Visionaries: Nixon and Churchill

B. Becoming Great Historians

III. Engaging Present Realities

A. Seeing Things as They Are

B. Effectively Leading into the Future

IV. Future Visionary Thinking

A. Scenario Thinking

B. Adapting to Technology and Trends

V. The Importance of Travel and Vision

A. Personal experience with travel

B. Becoming a better visionary

C. Living in the past, present, and future

VI. The Collaborative Process

A. Shared guidance in ministry

B. Creating ownership in ministry

C. Taking risks together

VII. Visionary Leadership

A. Creating a visionary field

B. Liberating the vision within constituents

C. Owning, communicating, and preaching the vision

VIII. Paul and Jesus as Visionary Leaders

A. Paul's vision for reaching Gentiles

B. Jesus' vision of the cross

 


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  • In this lesson, you'll learn about the critical role of leadership in ministry, covering key aspects like core values, vision strategy, decision making, team building, conflict resolution, and biblical theology of leadership to enhance your effectiveness as a leader.
  • This lesson offers a comprehensive exploration of the complexities and challenges in defining leadership, highlighting its context-dependent nature, the influence of culture, and the variety of styles, personalities, and traits associated with leaders; it ultimately identifies three essential components of leadership: having followers, influencing others, and setting direction.
  • In this lesson, you explore the importance of leadership, vision, and planning, and learn about key qualities of a good leader, such as global thinking, flexibility, and empathy. You will also understand the three components of leadership and the delicate balance between leadership and influence.
  • This lesson delves into the importance of leadership, illustrating how it is critical to success in the political, corporate, and religious sectors, with personal experiences and expert opinions reinforcing the need for strong leaders to guide and shape organizations.
  • In the lesson, you gain insights into the nature of leadership, its key components, and the need for leaders in various contexts. You also explore the debate on whether leaders are born with innate abilities or if leadership can be acquired and developed over time. Additionally, the concept of leadership as a summoning, where individuals are called to lead during specific situations, is introduced.
  • Focus on your strengths and improve your leadership skills through Marcus Buckingham's guide, which debunks myths about personal growth, identifies strengths, and emphasizes the value of team members volunteering their strengths while balancing service with strengths-based contributions.
  • This lesson equips you with an understanding of the context of leadership, various leadership styles, and practical applications to effectively lead in different situations.
  • When you are identifying the social context of a group, it is important to recognize the structural, human resource, political and symbolic aspects of the group.

  • In this lesson, you gain insights on situational context in leadership, focusing on the leader, followers, organization, and environment, enabling you to adapt and foster growth.
  • Gain insights into core values and axioms in leadership, the power of language and word pictures, the leader's responsibility for casting a vision, and overcoming the fear of asking for help in order to rally support for a great vision.
  • By studying humility as a core value for leaders, you gain insight into the importance of humility in avoiding temptations of pride and power and discover the characteristics that define humble leaders. Additionally, you explore other core values, such as compassion, courage, and diligence, and learn how to build and maintain these values in your life through experience, self-assessment, and reflection and how it is essential in avoiding the temptations of pride and power.
  • This lesson teaches the significance of core values and skills in effective leadership, covering aspects such as integrity, justice, authenticity, competence, discernment, and intuitive leadership, all of which contribute to becoming a well-rounded and impactful leader.
  • By exploring this lesson, you learn the importance of teamwork in leadership, the characteristics of high-performing teams, and how to build, develop, and lead successful teams in your organization.
  • Learn the principles of effective leadership, explore key leader characteristics, and discover how to build strong teams, develop leadership skills, and measure success.
  • Through this lesson, you gain insights into the critical role of leaders in setting direction, the importance of teamwork, and the need to establish a clear mission and purpose for organizations. Understanding these concepts enables you to be a more effective leader who can inspire and guide teams towards shared goals.
  • A Mission is a philosophic statement that answers the question, “Why are we here?” Vision is a strategic statement that answers the question, “Where are we going?”

  • This lesson teaches the importance of long term thinking in visionary leadership, emphasizing the value of learning from history, engaging present realities, and exploring future possibilities through scenario thinking and adapting to technology and trends.
  • This lesson explores strategic thinking, SWOT analysis, and trend analysis to help develop a clear vision and mission and adapt to an ever-changing environment in education and ministry.
  • Identifying objectives is the process of moving from vision to reality. Objectives are the tactics employed to carry out the strategies, the action plan of what needs to happen now. Decisiveness is an important quality of a good leader.

  • By studying this lesson on leadership and change, you will learn to effectively manage change in leadership, overcome resistance, implement and communicate change vision, and sustain long-lasting organizational transformation.
  • This lesson equips you with the knowledge and skills to navigate leadership challenges and transitions, fostering personal growth and organizational success.

This is a core leadership course designed for those who intend to be future leaders in ministry. This course will move from definitions to the core values of a leader; how to take a ministry through a vision process; engage in strategic planning, decision-making, and implementation; build great teams; work through conflict and change; delegate tasks; and effectively mentor the next generation of leaders. Models from the corporate, political, and military worlds will be compared and contrasted with biblical definitions and illustrations of leadership.

You may download the complete set of Dr. Johnson’s notes as a pdf. Since this class was presented during a condensed time frame, Dr. Johnson does not comment on all the points in his notes. We have provided the full text of the notes for your benefit. Click on the Class Outline link under Downloads.

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Dr. John Johnson
Principles of Effective Leadership
PC506-17
Vision and Leadership (Part 2/2)
Lesson Transcript

Dr. John Johnson [00:00:01] Long term thinking. This is really critical to the visionary process because as you will see, the further you can look back and the deeper you can look into the present enables you to better look out into the future. When you think about visionary, it's not just this looking forward sense. You've got to look in three directions. Paths to visionaries by nature, Someone who can appreciate the past. When you look at visionaries, you use illustration here of Nixon and Churchill as just two illustrations. They really were, for all their flaws, they were great visionaries. They could see into the future. Nixon could see the day that China and the US could break the walls down and have a strategic, important relationship, which it does today. Nixon was way ahead of his time. Churchill could see where the course was going, what Hitler would do, almost in an uncanny way. And the reason why they could was not because they had some horoscope or some something else that enabled them to. They were great historians so they could see the sweep of history and go, Oh, that's just exactly what again, is happening here. So they studied patterns. What that suggests to us is that if we're going to be great visionaries in our particular areas, be great historians. So if I want to see, oh, I want to dream about where worship could go in a visionary way, what would I do? I'd want to see where it has been, you know, where did worship go in the first centuries? What did worship look like in the rest excuse me, in the medieval era, How did it shift and move into the Reformation time and, you know, into the revival meetings of the 1800s? All of those give me clues and help me to see into the future where worship needs to go. It's called the Janis Effect. And the Janis effect says something like this. The further you can look back, the further you can look out, the further you can look back, the more enabled you'll be able to see looking into the future. You know, it's a good thing to stress, really, because we don't give the time so much today to studying history, studying church history. We're not so interested in being historians. We don't value that as we used to. And it may be why we tend to live so much in the present today. And we aren't such great visionaries because we're not such great historians. So I would encourage you and whatever you're going to do, pay a lot of attention to history. We tend to go, Well, that just gives me locked into the past. No, actually, it will really open your eyes to the future. That's what I'm experiencing. I didn't get a lot of history in my age, even though I minored in his history. Took more history in seminary than what's offered today. I still find I've been on this steep learning curve of history, and I find it doesn't pull me into the past. It suddenly I start saying, Oh, that. Yeah, that makes sense to go that direction, not that direction. I mean, history teaches that. Now part of it is also looking into the present a vision. It's a way of seeing things and seen reality. So you have to look at things as they are. As McManus puts it, if you can engage present realities effectively, how can you lead into the future? Who's going to follow you into the future if you don't have your act together with the present is the point. And then obviously the third direction is future visionary things out into the future. This is, in a sense, what sets leaders apart. While managers tend to have their eyes on the bottom line, leaders tend to have their eyes on the horizon. They both need each other. They're both critical. But part of that future and some of these explanations are taking mine walks, embarking on soul trains, forging a future, setting goals. Winston Churchill, as I mentioned, had an amazing ability to see the future. Almost seemingly supernatural. He predicted World War One warned of the coming of World War Two, foresaw the development even of the Iron Curtain, of what would happen between the Soviets. He even predicted Vietnam because he was able to run these scenarios in his mind, and that helped them to pierce the future. There's a guy named Peter Schwartz. I mentioned him down at the bottom. He he's one of these futurists. You know, you ever read about these guys who are futurists who look out into the future? I was with the guy this weekend who at one time was groomed to be the CEO of Shell, and he was telling me that what sets Shell Oil apart is that they would bring Peter Schwartz out every now and then as this futurist. And what he would do is he would do this scenario thinking, you bring me by scenario. When you create scenarios, what are you doing?

Speaker 2 [00:05:55] You see possibility.

Dr. John Johnson [00:05:56] Possibilities. Yeah, it's saying let's create some scenarios. Let's say the world goes this direction or the world goes this direction. Schwartz would maybe do something like this. You get this these shell executives together, and he'd say, Let's imagine that there's a a major conflict in the Middle East. And a lot of these people who are sitting on the oil suddenly turn the valves off. What are we going to do? Or let's say that we discover this huge discovery of natural gas. What if tomorrow some brain from M.I.T. really does invent a form of transportation that doesn't need gasoline? More oil. What Peter Schwartz was teaching Shell Oil is prepare yourself for scenarios so that you don't get caught flat footed. You say. So let's say that guy from M.I.T. comes up with a car that doesn't need fossil fuels. If Shell is not going to be caught flat footed, what are they going to do? Diversify. Exactly. Marcia. Yeah. We better not put all our eggs in this one fossil fuel basket, or we'll be it. We'll go the way of typewriters. Right. If a guy owned a typewriter shop years ago, scenario thinking he might go, What if I'm starting to see the possibility with this computer thing? Nobody yet has the idea of a P.C. personal computer. Let's run that scenario. That could happen. And who would buy this? So maybe he starts diversifying. I'm going to you know, I'm going to go into this or this here. That's what he would do. Now, I'm going to take you back historically to 1973, 1973. I know it sounds ancient, but for me, 1973 was my second year of seminary. 1973 was this huge oil crisis and gas shortage. It was such a shortage that people had to wait in long lines for gas and they even had to adopt a even an odd system. If your license plate ended on an even number, you could get gas on even days. So I remember my roommate when we were just living down the street here, there was a mobile station there on Division. We'd get up at like four in the morning and get in line. To get gas. That's what it was like. I visited my family, drove my car. I had a little back then Datsun Nissan that got like 38 miles to a gallon. I'd have people actually, when I'd stop at a restaurant, something would come would offer me cash.

Speaker 2 [00:09:08] One time.

Dr. John Johnson [00:09:09] Yeah. Up to, like, an imagined back then, like 30 $500. People were desperate, but I thought, no way am I going to sell this car. But I remember driving back from San Diego and across the Oregon border. Imagine this. There wasn't one gas station open between the border and Portland.

Speaker 2 [00:09:31] And.

Dr. John Johnson [00:09:32] That was scary. You're driving alone. Your fuel tank is getting closer and closer to E. And every time you go by an exit ramp, you see no lights on at the gas stations. It was a scary, scary time. Now, Shell Oil came out and came through that a lot better than others. Why? Because they were visionary. They were visionary because they worked with futurists like Schwartz, who I think could be wrong. But I think he still meets with Shell on an annual basis. And does scenario thinking What if things go this way? What if things go this way? What are we going to do? Part of this scenario thinking is saying we don't know. We need a futurist to help us see. But this is what visionaries do. They get people together to look out into the future, to explore the future, look at different possible futures, and then make a decision. Going back to Schwartz, he's got a book that's on your list if you want to read him. He might have a newer book by now. Identify relevant probabilities, ask the important questions, know where to get the best information, complete contingency preparations, modify as new information comes in. So part of it is paying attention to trends, patterns, science, technology. A guy came to me this week and he said, Oh, you know what? Our family, we were out of town and we visited this church. And in the midst of that, the pastor said, I want you all to take your cell phones out and turn them on. I want you to tell me what you think about what we're seeing in this statement here. And so people started texting immediately and it was all coming on the screen. So the congregation, as the pastors preaching is seen, not that this is new. I've been reading about this for some time and different guys doing it. But what I was interested in was my parishioners comment. As you said, we began to see together something far bigger than what the pastor could see about this issue as we all sort of collaborated with our insights. The point is part of, in a sense, futuristic thinking is what is it? Let's say we're a group of pastors around this table would be to say something like this, and maybe the seminary we're creating would be a what if we had a section of us? Or what if once a month we or once every six months or even once a year did scenario thinking? And we said, So let's think about some scenarios. Okay. Well, part of that approach, as I put here, is is know where to get the best information or modify as new information comes in. Where is technology going? Is what I'm getting at. And what might be the implication for ministry? Actually, there's the technology now that you could communicate with the pastor while he's speaking. And we could all see that. And maybe by texting, it keeps a certain anonymity so that people wouldn't be so embarrassed or shy and might actually say something profound. Gets back to dialogical, let's say. Back to Sandy, she says. We're going to be the seminary that prepares people. Well, then you've got to bring technology into that piece because that's going to be critical to how you do the dialogical, right? But maybe, see, we're talking about this maybe five years ago, but we can see out a little bit because we're paying attention to trends. Patterns. We're reading Wired magazine. I don't know because here's a magazine where they're always looking at where technology is going and what might be the implications. Well, that could get pretty exciting, right? Or we could just choose to kind of live in the present, or which ministries often are prone to do live where in the past. So my first church, all they did was sit around and talk about the fifties. Well, no wonder they did the scene where things fringes, the outer edge of ideas. And part of that is travel, too. I give an illustration here. Once when I went to India and I, I was teaching there and they asked me to speak. When Friedman had written his book, The Earth is Flat, to talk about the implications of globalism and the church. And when I got done, a couple of Indian professors said, Oh, but you need to understand, we've actually gone beyond that. And that is actually we're reverting back to nationalism. Actually, no, we're not reverting back to nationalism. We're reverting back to tribalism. We've seen the global and we don't want to. Yeah, we can't be naive to the fact that things have become global, but there's a trend that's moving us back to tribal. Why? Why do you think? Well, community. Yeah.

Speaker 2 [00:14:58] It's been a year. Yeah.

Dr. John Johnson [00:15:00] We're losing our identity. My illustration here is part of futurists is paying attention to trends. A really important piece to your life. So I hope if you don't do this, you will travel. I will tell you. My first travel was 1989 when I went to Manila and then on to Taipei and then down to Indonesia. I was gone six weeks totally changed my life. It put a bug in my system. It's like it's just there, right? Go by an airport. It's just the call and it's worth every single penny because there's some education. There's something you learn that books and everything movies can't replace. And I think it helps you to be a better visionary. I mean, when I came back from India, I thought, Oh, and what does that say about people? What they want, what they need? So visionaries live in these three realms, this 360 sweep, and they move constantly. They just flow from past and present future all the time. I like that. I think that's where we ought to be living, always moving back and forth. Okay, stop for a second. Thoughts, Questions.

Speaker 2 [00:16:26] You know, we're all going out there to church ministry and this whole collaborative process. I guess our roots are in the scriptures and. It's a collaborative process. They seem to rely on shared guidance.

Dr. John Johnson [00:16:46] If you are going to be a visionary, you don't want to be out there alone. You got to take people with you. It is a collaborative effort, as we see underscored in the next piece here is we've got to create an ownership in ministry. We're trying to do this in a collaborative way and say a board in a pasture is synonymous to executive and legislative in a way. But if the board's over here in the pastures over here, you're never going to get with the vision. You're never going to get anywhere. If the board says, Oh, that's Pastor John's ideas as his dreams, we don't really agree with it. I can tell you it will never go anywhere in our church. But in most churches, part of the legislative is the whole body. They've got to get a part of it. So that's why, Dee, probably a good segue way to create an ownership. A vision must first be owned by ourselves. I mean, we're the champion of the cause and this is what I keep learning. I'm still learning this. If we don't champion it, don't wait for somebody else to Don't go. Well, I'm yeah, I think this is a great day. I'll look at others to market it, sell it. No, we've got to be the main cheerleader and then it's got to be owned by others. It's a process of engaging constituents, venture capitalists who are willing to take risks. We've got to fill this together. Or Wheatley to go back to her book, I mentioned at the beginning into finding leadership, who looks at it from a scientific side, and she says, What visionaries do is they create visionary fields. I think that's a cool statement. You're creating a destination field, if you will. So they have to move off the walls and into the corridors. The leader has to be the Beacon Tower, pulsing the vision, stating, clarifying, reflective modeling. If we do this, what she's saying is a visionary field begins to develop. If somebody walks in, your church, walks in the seminary, Nikko Gosh, it has some has an ethos of the future. You just feel it. Well, that's what leaders are called to create. If they don't, if they're not careful, if they just let the process go where it will, there might be not a visionary field that might be more of a wow. I stepped into the past when I walked in there. It felt like yesterday. We don't want that. What people really want to hear is not simply the leaders vision. They want to hear about their own aspirations, not set in the middle of page 11. They want to hear about their own aspirations. Just underline that. That's so key. Create leaders. Don't impose their vision. They liberate the vision inside their constituents. All of our people down deep, we have to believe this are dreamers. They don't know what it is. It's kind of like, say, can you guys see this? I mean, dream with me for a minute. Can't you see it? Look into the future. Isn't this what it looks like? Isn't this what you want? Me? Don't you want to be like this? Isn't this the kind of church that you go? Oh, man, I'd love to be part of. Can you see it? And then they begin to own it. It might have been you that brought it out of reflection. Everything else. But they might think at the end. They're the ones. It was their vision. That's okay, right? Actually, it's better. I mean, what I wanted village. I don't want people to go. Oh, and let me tell you about Pastor John's vision. Or let me tell you about our leadership's vision. Know what you want people to say is, Oh, gosh, let me tell you about our dream. And it's a lot of work. So how do you do it? Own it, communicate it, preach it, sell it. Let vision leak. Visionaries have to do that. Just let it ooze out of you and then stay focused. Visionaries are directional. There's a fixed mass in their walk. There's clarity. Vigilance about it is I put there. Paul was a great visionary, right? He knew where he was going. One of my favorite texts, this Philippians 312. This is a visionary. Here he is. This is what's amazing. Where's Paul when he writes a letter to the Philippians Church? He's in prison, right? He's he's in Rome. He's incarcerated. Then he says in verse 12, Not that I've already reached the goal or I'm already fully mature, but I make every effort to lay, hold, take hold of it, because I've been taken hold of by Christ Jesus brothers. I don't consider myself to have taken hold of that yet. But one thing I do for getting what's behind and reaching forward to what's ahead, he literally says something like this I'm pressing on. I'm pressing on to lay hold of why Christ laid hold of me. What did Christ lay hold of me for? What's the vision? What was it again? To reach Gentiles. Right. So here's Paul in prison saying I'm pressing on to lay hold of. He could still see a future out there. I mean, while others might have said It's all over, it's done. I'm just going to rot here in prison. Paul's was still thinking visionary. He's just amazing, you know, as he says in other language in first Corinthians nine, if you turn back there in that well-known text, verse 24, don't you know that the runners in a stadium all race but only one receives a prize run in such a way that you'll win? Now everyone who competes, exercises self-control and everything, however they do it to receive a perishable crown. But we in imperishable want. Therefore I don't run like one who runs aimlessly. No direction, no vision or box like one who beats the air. I discipline my body and bring it under strict control so that after preaching to others, I myself will not be disqualified. So Paul had this vision. He knew where he was going and he wasn't going to let anybody get him off task. Jesus, His vision was the cross. So in Luke nine, it says his face was fixed. Luke 951 He had a vision and no one was going to get in the way as I put him, in contrast to those who have little idea why where they are going, as Woody Allen put it, they seem to believe that 80% of success is showing up. Well, Dad, what do you beef in about? I got up there and I said, People live that way. Incrementalism, small changes to small things. Those unfocused and scattered are apt to constantly change the motion being that a vibration movement. And some people are like vibrations on cell phones. They make a certain amount of noise, but that cell phone is still sitting in the pocket. So the leader's job is to keep the project to focus. So obviously, don't underestimate the importance of a vision. Vision is key. Helen Keller. When asked what would be worse than being born blind, she said to have sight without a vision. It's a great statement. Let's see what Western's vision is. So we got purpose to glorify God. That mission, catalyst and resource for spiritual transformation by providing with and for the Church advanced training for strategic ministry roles. To be most effective, Christian organizations must discern the distinctive contribution that God would have them make to His kingdom. Program. To try to do everything is foolish and arrogant. Western therefore focuses its ministry upon providing advanced training to individuals who aspire to or continually serve in strategic ministry roles so they can become agents of spiritual transformation. These restating the mission right recognizing the critical role that leaders play with respect to how effectively the church fulfills its God given mission. Western give special emphasis to training pastors and related ministry leaders. While this ministry seeks to serve the church, it's also done an active partnership with the church because local congregations occupy a unique place. Furthermore, biblical synergy results when the distinctive resources of the seminary and church unite in equipping task, Western also partners with selected peer church ministries. A key part of Western's vision is to provide education that is thoroughly biblical, and its conviction is that of vision, faithfully conservative in its theology, passionately spiritual at its core, intensely missional in its focus, creatively flexible in its delivery, warmly relational in a dynamic. And so doing Western seeks to be both a proactive influence and an ongoing source of support for the body of Christ as it mature spiritually and increases in fruitfulness. To that end, special emphasis is given to grounding students in the classical dynamics of spiritual renewal for both individuals and groups. So what's our vision as we look out into the future? What are we dreaming? What are we going to be? What sets us apart? What particularized is the mission?

Speaker 2 [00:27:10] Agents of transformation would have been.

Dr. John Johnson [00:27:14] Agents of transformation.

Speaker 2 [00:27:17] You'd never like to send out division divisions or to send out agents to send up training.

Dr. John Johnson [00:27:26] So our particular vision that sets us apart from other seminaries as well is we're sending out agents of spiritual transfer. But isn't every seminary sending out agents of spiritual transformation?

Speaker 2 [00:27:39] Those five bullet points that you read seem like that was the vision, which I tend to cheer for, because one of them is creative ways of delivering the pathology part.

Dr. John Johnson [00:27:52] I knew you would just try to get that.

Speaker 2 [00:27:56] And there's some of that.

Dr. John Johnson [00:27:57] Okay, so a key part of the vision is thoroughly biblical in its conviction. We'd say that sets apart the seminary from others, right? Not every seminaries thoroughly biblical and conviction, faithfully conservative in its theology. This particular crisis is the mission, right? Passionately spiritual at its core.

Speaker 2 [00:28:23] Rather than merely academic.

Dr. John Johnson [00:28:26] Och intensely missional in its focus.

Speaker 2 [00:28:31] As in general, I think more and more in control. That's what drew me here. What's that? What drew me here was that global focus.

Dr. John Johnson [00:28:41] I if it doesn't say anything about global creatively flexible in its delivery, warmly relational in its dynamic. Part of that is to say, yeah, some seminars can be pretty non relational. It can be pretty just academic institutions. So we're saying so if you're going to teach here, part of our vision is that this is a school that people say, Boy, there you get to know one another, you get to know professors or something like that, right? So we see elements of vision. Probably fair to say here that distinguish us from other theological institutions. What do you guys think?

Speaker 2 [00:29:30] And sounds like a dictionary definition of the seminar instead of the vision. It's kind of like I'm just getting more of a description.

Dr. John Johnson [00:29:40] It's it's not quite if I hear you right, Adam. It's not like you step back and go. What a great train ride or.

Speaker 2 [00:29:52] They're going or they're reaching for the stars.

Dr. John Johnson [00:29:54] It's not. Yeah. Or that's futuristic or that's visionary. Yeah. We don't want to get a vision out there that's so seemingly impossible that it doesn't really. If we said, you know, let's make it our vision to climb to the top of the Himalayas, that we might go. That's really inspirational. But, you know, we're not we ever do that. But people say our vision is to get to the top of Mount Hood. We might go. It's going to be a challenge. We can't do it till next May because we've really passed this the safest season to climb that mountain. It's going to take just some arduous work, but it's going to take also some skill to get to one section. We're going to have to rope up. We're going to need to know how to do that, how to use ice axes. We're going to need to know what time because there's a safe time and a bad time to go. But we can do it. But it's a pretty ambitious goal, But we're going have to get in shape.

Speaker 2 [00:31:04] The reason we've got to go with a calculation.

Dr. John Johnson [00:31:07] Calculation, yeah, but it's got to be vision that that creates an energy, right, that expands imagination. And I remember when my neighbor one day said, You want to climb Mt. Hood? We did it a couple of times. It it was a great vision. It was a great vision. It was pretty audacious that, you know, and it required careful planning. But it was. It was certainly bigger than climbing Mount Tabor. We have to come up with visions that are realistic, that are stretching, that aren't unreachable, but I think that are somewhat concrete. The problem with this a little bit is it's kind of hard to get your arms quite around, isn't it? But nonetheless, I think, as Jon points out, if you look a little bit carefully and just you begin to see that there are visionary pieces to this is in there. We're going to do education differently. We're going to be conservative in our theology. We're going to be biblically center, We're going to be a relational campus. This is what we dream out there. They're valid, Right? And it's what makes us different than even George Fox across the river. It particularized is for us our mission. Okay. Thoughts, Questions about vision.

Speaker 2 [00:32:31] Just my experience at Southern. This is a much more relational schooling than I looked on campus. It's just so much more. For.

Dr. John Johnson [00:32:42] Southern might be more academic.

Speaker 2 [00:32:45] Yeah, that's so I'm saying it's different. Yeah.

Dr. John Johnson [00:32:48] So you want a warmer campus, more relational experience. Education delivered in different ways. Western you ought to consider if those things aren't important to you, but you want to make sure that you are coming out with a PhD and you've got the kind of library that's going to facilitate that. So what I deal with when students call me about entering the Daemon program, I go, So what's your objective? Well, I'd like to maybe teach someday at a seminary. It's a great doctoral program, but it's it's really not its main objective. You might be able to teach at an academic institution with the team in, but it's less an academic and more of a professional doctorate. So our mistake sometimes is we who then we go, well, we you know, we need to have an academic doctoral degree, too. We should really do that. And pretty soon we're trying to be all things to all people. You can only do so many things. Well, we couldn't do an academic doctorate while there. First of all, we don't have the kind of theological library that accreditation would demand. Not to say we have a bad library. It's just not at that level. Of course, one day I'm not even sure we'll need libraries. Yeah. And so anything else? I want to make sure you really get this piece down. You understand? Now you understand the difference between a mission and a vision. The vision? Can we set the vision? Particularized is the mission. The mission asks the question, Why are we here? The vision asks the question, Where are we going? We're going to move into strategies, which is going to answer the third question How do we do this? So we say our vision is to be a relational campus. That's a nice vision. But if we don't put strategies in place, we if we don't answer the question how we may potentially end up an impersonal campus. Right. We might say, if we're going to be a relation of campus, we're going to have to put some things in place. Like students are really a high priority, getting interested in their lives, those kind of things. We've got about 10 minutes left, so let me at least begin to introduce strategies to us and then we'll take it from here. As I mentioned, their strategies are the and here's one definition the systematic choices of how to carry out the mission and vision, how to deploy the resources to achieve the goals. The mission again tells us why. The vision tells us where primarily the picture and the strategy defines the logic of how or to put it here. Think of the strategy is the game plan. What's our game plan? That's what strategic thinking is doing, is trying to think strategically. Get to the issue of how. So as I put it here, it's the first level of detail. And here's the deal. It's what keeps us on track towards this. All right. Very important. So what we're moving to here now is as we build this thing, we're now on a strategy. This is very important. When you work at the strategic level, you've got to constantly be asking yourself, is that going to get us here? All your strategies have to be about getting to your vision. So if someone says, Oh, I have a great strategy, part of our game plan is we're going to do that. If it doesn't get you to, your vision could be a great thing to do. But it's not about our dream. Now, what each of these are doing is we're moving more and more into what we call things that are fluid. Meaning what exactly?

Speaker 2 [00:37:19] Just a little.

Dr. John Johnson [00:37:20] Adjustable up for modification, Right, Marcia? Change. So this here, we're moving to what is not fluid. Our purpose, our mission is pretty much in concrete. We're not going to have this big, long retreat every year to go. We're going to go away on a mission retreat to come up with another mission. No, that's our mission. The vision becomes more fluid. Now we get to strategies and the strategies become even more fluid. That is, they are more susceptible to change. What is our strategy or game plan? This year may be very different next year. Times change. So our strategies change.

Speaker 2 [00:38:07] You mentioned a strategy. Yeah, strategy usually in the long run, but in some plays we still need adapted by Spanish. So new idea about tactics. Okay, well.

Dr. John Johnson [00:38:22] We'll get there. We're taking it piece by piece, layer by layer. I'm intentionally doing this because I want you to differentiate them, understand how they relate to one another, because a big part of what you will be called to do as leaders, I believe, as effective leaders, as take whatever you lead through this process layer by layer, make sure everybody gets it. And then once they get it, then just pound it, pound it in all the time. And that's the only way you keep your organization directional movement. Otherwise, no direction, no movement means dead in. Okay, see it one.