It's the day before and I admit my mind is preoccupied with tomorrow's event. I've been training for over three months so I suppose that's to be expected.
We'll leave about 4 a.m. and get home mid-afternoon. We're having lunch at a cafe in Grants Pass friend Ellen told me about that's owned and operated by a couple we have connections with dating back to our years in Michigan.
We decided to give up on lunch at In n' Out when the news said they expect a line that will extend on to the freeway that runs through town. After running 13.04 miles I'm not going to feel like waiting in a line like that.
And why is it 13.04?? The marathon distance is 26.2 and has been that precise distance since 1908, so a half marathon should be 13.1 miles. Their website says this course is 13.04 miles. I wonder why they didn't add another lap around the start/finish parking lot to get to that standard. Seems simple enough.
I plan on going to church Sunday, but my body may decline the opportunity.
Our church has gone through some staffing changes over the last few months that have apparently served as the occasion for some restructuring of goals and objectives. So Brett said his sermon will be a kind of "state of the church" piece to make sure we're all on the same page.
If I don't go I'll certainly listen to his sermon on the church website.
The term is, vision casting. It's what a good leader does effectively - determining where the organization needs to go, explaining that vision to the members, and then inspiring and motivating them to join in the effort to get there.
"Good pastors excel at vision casting."
I was never any good at it. More accurately, I didn't do it much at all, so I guess you could say I was bad at it.
And I'll always wonder if Pathway would have had a different trajectory if I'd been a skilled vision caster.
I've spent more than a little time thinking about this issue and looking back over my ministry at five different churches with this aspect of contemporary pastoral ministry in mind. Is effective vision casting a natural and innate ability? It doesn't seem like something you could learn from a book or a seminar. Sure, you could learn some of the mechanics, but there's a difference between playing the notes and making music.
I've never been a guy who can inspire people to action. Even when I have a pretty good idea of what needs to happen I don't have that piece in me that can get a group all jazzed to get on board and run into battle. Mel Gibson in Braveheart....NOT me. Maybe I'm too rational to be a vision caster. Perhaps the strong analytical component in my personality which helps me see the course required needs to be (and isn't) coupled with the emotional component that effectively reaches people's hearts as well as their minds.
Stick with me here....
Five years ago I bought a Curt hitch (one of the bigger names in trailer hitches) specifically designed for an '09 Kia, and ordered the lighting harness that goes with it. The hitch bolted right on as promised and the wiring harness clipped into the fittings Kia supplied under the rear of the Sorento just inboard of the RR tire. Done!
Except that a year or so ago the tail lights on the Kia didn't go out when the car was turned off and the key removed. I discovered that via a dead battery. I took it to the Kia dealer in Eugene and they isolated the problem to a module that's part of that hitch wiring harness I'd purchased. The cigarette pack-size module that's part of the harness had failed and power was allowed to leak through that circuit. No problem: remove the fuse attached to that module and replace it whenever I want to tow a trailer.
I had to install new lights on this truck bed trailer I bought two weeks ago and happened to have a brand new light kit sent to me by Harbor Freight months ago (long, irrelevant story), so I put that kit on this trailer. Installed the fuse in the module, hooked up the wiring to the trailer via the supplied connection and...tail lights but nothing else. No turn signals and no brake lights.
Turns out that module in the harness I bought for the Kia had more than just the one problem.
OK, I can do this. I'll just pitch that bad harness and its module and wire directly into the Kia's lights making splice connections for the tail lights, brake lights, and turn signals. I've done that before.
I decided on a whim to call the Kia dealer to see if they had a Kia harness before I did my splicing. In the course of the conversation the guy said, "Do NOT splice into those wires! You'll blow the car's module that controls all your lighting." He recommended I call a hitch place in town and that guy said the same thing. "Do NOT try to splice into wires. You'll blow the car's lighting module.
THIS is why I drive a '66 Mustang. There ain't no dang modules anywhere. They hadn't invented modules in 1966! Get in and drive. You wanna splice a wire? Go for it.
So I went to the hitch place and bought just the module that will replace my bad one. $70.
OK, the point of all of that:
Back in the day, when I went into pastoral ministry, they didn't have modules or vision casting. You didn't have to get people on board because they were already there. The local church was a respected social institution bigger and more important than its congregants. If the church said, "We need to..." the folks said, "OK."
You have to cast a vision and get people all enthused about it if they see themselves as something akin to free agents who choose what they'll do or not do. You have to earn their loyalty and support whereas in the old days you could, at least for the most part, assume it because they served the church, not the other way around.
My problem: I grew up in the old environment and lived & served across into the new. So if vision casting is not innate, if it's something that can be learned or absorbed I was at a distinct disadvantage. And never got there.
I much prefer cars without modules and churches without vision casting.
That is NOT a statement about the relative virtues of either. They wouldn't have come up with modules if they didn't bring some benefits (even if I can't see them) and someone who has thoughtfully and consciously bought into a church's vision is arguably more enthusiastic about it that the person for whom acquiescence is the default condition.
I just know which one I'm better prepared and able to deal with.
How's your pastor at vision casting?
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