Vision, £5 Million... and Malcolm Kyte!

I once heard a leader announce that he was praying for his church to double in the next year. There was no doubt this was visionary, but I am not sure anyone in the room truly believed it. The church he led had not grown for the last 5 years, so the faith required to believe for a doubling in the next year was beyond me.

There is an important leadership lesson here. While vision is about lifting people’s eyes to the future, the credibility of the visionary and the future picture painted by the leader are crucially linked to the past. Therefore, whenever I present vision to the church here at Kings, we always look back and give thanks to God for His faithfulness before we look forward. We celebrate His provision up to the present and then from that foundation look to the future.

At our Vision Sunday at King’s last weekend, I shared more about our proposed £5 million new building project, and the news of additional members to our staff team, not least Malcolm and Cathy Kyte coming to join us at Kings from next April. I was very aware that the very encouraging response from the church is rooted in our history rather than my ability to describe an exciting new future together!