Make it Transformational: A Blog for Champion Discipleship

A while back, I posted on the topic of elevator pitches and how to strengthen them.   The hat-trick for a successful pitch?  Make sure it’s cause-focused, vison-focused, and easy to understand.  Here’s an excerpt from that posting related to the vision piece:

Help your listener catch the dream of where you are headed and what you aim to accomplish in the future with respect to your cause; help them clearly see that you need their help – working alongside you - to impact the cause and get to this future place.

‘Casting vision’, as we call it, is all about painting a simple, tangible picture of where your ministry is heading with respect to a cause.  It generally conveys a highly aggressive goal which would require divine assistance – and help from the listener or reader – to achieve it.

Vision statements should be clear, compelling, magnetic, and external in focus.  The heart of any pitch, be it in an appeal letter, at a fundraising event, or in a one-on-one conversation, should be about the ministry’s God-given vision of the future.  It helps the listener, after all, to answer a common pressing question: How can I make a difference in my neighborhood, community, or world?

Here are some effective vision statements to get your juices going: 

-           'To the moon and back in this decade' (President Kennedy talking about the cause of space exploration)

-          'Every book, ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds' (Amazon)

-          'Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful'  (Google)

-          ‘A “dad” in every home’ (The Playmakers, a youth mentoring organization which trains athletic coaches to disciple inner-city boys)

Of course, a catchy vision isn’t all that it takes to get the commitment of champions to work alongside you to impact the cause.  Every organization with a vision for the future needs a solid strategic plan to take it from its current state to the future place. 

To learn more about casting your vision to ‘newcomers’, register and attend an upcoming fundraising banquet workshop.   Even if you are not immediately planning a fundraising event, you will gain invaluable ideas about how to effectively communicate your cause to newcomers.

Last Tuesday I began explaining the Four P’s of communicating our vision based on the book, Managing Transitions, by William Bridges (Perseus Publishing, 1991, 2003).   The Four P’s must be communicated.  If not, vision is empty and abstract and virtually impossible for people to wrap their arms around.   A partial review of the first two…   (1) We must communicate the Purpose behind our vision.  Communicating purpose to our people means answering the question, “Why are we doing what...

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When communicating our ministry’s God-given vision to our people, we must remember to communicate the Four P’s.  Vision without the Four P’s will result in extreme frustration for our people.   The Four P’s come from a wonderful book that has sold over 400,000 copies.  William Bridges wrote, Managing Transitions (Perseus Publishing, 1991, 2003).  Go get it right HERE!   (1) We must communicate the Purpose behind our vision.  Communicating purpose to our people means answering the question...

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Sound familiar?  In just the past two days, I’ve heard this cry from two ministries.  In one case, it was after a meeting with an ED and two of his board members about their upcoming event.   If you know about Transformational Giving fundraising dinners, you know they’re all about ‘casting the vision.’  So it’s, um, kind of a big problem if three ministry leaders, as I witnessed during that meeting, have differing views of the vision and type of organization they want to be.  I followed...

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