Articles by Paul Scanlon

'Write down the vision and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.' 1

This is probably one of the best known and most quoted verses in the Bible on the subject of vision. However, what is usually less known is the context within which it was spoken. These words from God to Habakkuk were part of a reply to some specific issues Habakkuk had been asking God about. Chapter one of the book records these. Basically they consist of two complaints which had become the focus of Habakkuk’s anger and frustration. His complaints were about injustice, lawlessness, the oppression of the poor and how the wicked seemed to be getting away with murder - often literally.

Habakkuk had a table thumping, finger wagging, voice raising complaint that he would not leave alone until he heard from God. He was in good company. His contemporary, Jeremiah had a similar complaint2 as did Nehemiah, Moses and Gideon. More recent history records that Abraham Lincoln had a complaint about slavery, Martin Luther King had a complaint about racism and human rights, Nelson Mandela had a complaint about apartheid and Mother Theresa a complaint about hunger and poverty – the list goes on. Each was so motivated by their complaint that they gave their lives to doing something about it, and this became their vision.

The principle I am therefore establishing is this: At the core of every visionary leader’s life is a deep dissatisfaction with how things are; at the root of every history maker’s calling is a complaint. That complaint is their cause, it is their fuel, drive and motivation to press through and accomplish their dream, however tough it gets along the way.

I want you to understand this important principle because in Christian teaching and preaching, our emphasis is usually on the vision, not the complaint it sprang from. We study vision, are keen to ask what a person’s vision is and work hard to ‘communicate the vision’ of our church, ministry or organisation. However, unless that vision springs from a fundamental dissatisfaction with how things are, it lacks a cause. And without a cause, vision lacks a ‘Why?’ It lacks a reason.

People need a reason for being asked to sacrifice for the vision you are presenting, and that reason must be real, known and felt by all involved. They must feel the strength of the complaint which fuels the vision. And here lies the point of my title for this article: The vision you have will perish and die unless you stay in vital touch with the deep complaint that first motivated you to develop a vision of a better future and then go and do something about it. Without a complaint your vision will perish.

Complaint or Complaint

When people have no complaint they become compliant; they do what others tell them, accept the status quo, and sign up to long established traditions. They do what they do because everyone else does; together they comply.

Compliant people will never become visionary people. Compliant leaders cannot be visionary leaders, because compliance is comfortable and comfort has never been the mother of complaint. A comfortable church without any complaints is doomed, even though they have a clear vision statement and a reputation for being a visionary church.

I know of many churches which have a clear vision statement but in some, that vision statement has no apparent influence on the day-to-day activities of the church. Much of the leader’s time is spent talking about the vision to staff, the wider leadership and congregation, but with little success. Life becomes a continuous struggle to get more people involved with the vision. The vision is clear and well articulated but people remain inactive. Why? The reason is simple: To share my vision, you must first share my complaint. Once you share my complaint, envisioning you is easy. Until you feel what I feel about what’s wrong, you will never understand why you should help me to put it right.

Vision is fuelled from two directions, the past and the future. My complaint about what must change pushes relentlessly from behind and the vision of better things pulls me onwards from the future. The gift this gives me is awesome: It means that on a bad day, or whenever I feel overwhelmed by the size of the challenge of the future, I will always keep going by simply remembering the past.

From late 1998 onwards we began crossing our church over from the safe, comfortable and controlling church we were, to the ‘new breed’ church we’ve become. So today it sometimes feels like our church membership has a ‘pre’ and ‘post’ crossing over mixture to it. Those who were in the church prior to 1998 can remember the past and those who arrived in more recent years can’t. The advantage that this gives some of us is that we sometimes feel like war veterans, and the freedoms we fought and suffered for make us just as scared about going back as others are excited about going forward. If we ever have moments of doubt or lack confidence about going forward, we only have to remember the past – which we are determined never to go back to – and going forward suddenly becomes a great option, however great the challenge we face! People who haven’t settled that going back is never better, will always struggle to find a reason to keep going in the face of adversity.

History is not kind to people who go back. The Bible does not record what happened to people who went back, it simply forgets them. God is not interested in the ‘Orpahs’ who go back, but only in the ‘Ruths’ who refuse to go back because they know that forward is the only option in the light of a sterile past.3 The millions who went back from the brink of Canaan did not write the next chapter of Bible history but Joshua and Caleb did.

Blessed are the complainers for they shall see change

It’s the complainers in all walks of life that are getting results. Thousands of lobby groups, many of them small in number, refuse to be silent about their cause, whether it is saving the whale, protecting the environment or having better working conditions. Here in the UK a celebrity TV chef called Jamie Oliver recently took on the Government about the poor nutritional quality of school meals. His complaint was that our children are being fed junk food at the most formative time of their physical and intellectual development. His outrage exposed the disgrace on national TV and the public protest he provoked resulted in a change in the level of government funding for school meals in a matter of weeks. Many before him had expressed a concern about school meals, but a concern is not a complaint. A complaint fuels a vision to bring change and the consistent voice it becomes makes real change possible.

Please understand I am not talking here about whinging! Whingers are people who complain about things that they permit and tolerate. Whingers are ten a penny, but people with a genuine complaint, who are willing to become a force for change, are much rarer.

What is your Complaint?

What’s your problem? What’s your issue? What can’t you stand? What won’t you put up with? What do you have an attitude about? What bothers you about the church? What keeps you awake at night? What drives you crazy and gets you up on your ‘soap box’ thumping the table in protest? Here you will find your life’s cause and calling. Your irritation is your ministry. What you can’t stand is what you were put here to stand up for.

Like Nehemiah, I can’t stand the broken down state that much of the church is in today. Our testimony is in tatters, we are the subject of reproach, have a reputation for irrelevance and arrogance, and lack credibility. Much of the church, like Nehemiah’s walls, is broken down, dysfunctional and in urgent need of restoration. It angers me to see how secular TV portrays the stuffy vicar as the stereotypical church leader. It angers me that no one turns to the church for wisdom on the serious issues of life. It angers me that every Sunday here in the UK millions are in Ikea and only a few are in church. The truth is I can’t blame them for choosing Ikea over church because at least they go home with something useful from Ikea. Sadly, that is not the case in many churches, and it should be.

170 Complaints

In our church we currently have about 170 ministries. We list all of them in our Directory of Ministries which is a tool to help new people discover what’s going on and help everyone fi nd their niche in ministry. This directory should really be called a ‘Directory of Complaints’ because every ministry is actually someone’s complaint. The vast majority of these ministries have been started by church members who felt deeply that something should be done about a certain need. We on the pastoral staff refused to become the champions of causes we didn’t feel were ours, and simply created a culture that says, ‘If you’re angry about it, fix it!’

People have complaints about training, music, kids church, youth, security, visitor experience, tidiness, catering and hospitality, media, marriage, money management, transport, the poor, the homeless, prostitution, drug addiction, solvent abuse, housing, care of the elderly, those in prison – and so on.

The people leading these ministries are doing so because they have a ‘bee in their bonnet’ about it. Their vision of what they can do is coming from their complaint about what was once done poorly or, worse than that, never done at all.

If something bothers you, if you feel something should be done, someone should say something, someone should stand up and stand out, then don’t tell your leaders. You’re noticing it for a reason, you feel strongly about it for a reason. And the reason is, it’s your complaint, which is the beginning of your vision. In the same place that you find your life’s complaint you will find your life’s call. So, be careful what you complain about because you just may start a ministry!

People inevitably come and go from these various ministries in our church because time and commitment separates out the helpers of the vision from the carriers of the cause that birthed it. But true leaders are always carriers not just helpers.

Choose your complaint, choose your enemies

The great thing about identifying and then choosing your complaint is that it enables you to choose your own enemies. I’ve spent years of my ministry fighting for things that I didn’t really care about, but those over me did. I defended various rules and church practices that my leadership felt were fundamental, but hand on heart I didn’t. If you spend your life fi ghting someone else’s enemies you will ultimately violate yourself. Your soul begins to resent taking mental and emotional beatings for what it knows your heart doesn’t really care about.

I wept over people leaving our church, when in my heart I was glad to see the back of them. I separated from some over tithing, authority and the role of Ephesians 4 Ministries, when in my heart I knew that these things were not really important enough to lose people over.

If you keep asking your body and soul to hand you the physical and emotional strength to fight a war your heart is not in, they will eventually shut down on you. Alternatively if your body and soul know that this is something you would genuinely die for, they will fi ght with you and hand you the resources you need for as long as it takes, without ever leading a mutiny against you. You can be at war every day for a cause you adore and still sleep like a baby every night, be happy and keep your joy. How? By making sure that the war you’re in is tied to the fundamental complaint of your life. Those who don’t share your complaint will never understand you. Those who do, will never forgive you for walking away from a fi ght that you were put on the planet to win. Winning your war is always about others, often thousands and millions of others, who need you to sustain your complaint until the vision becomes their reality too.

Making the vision plain for runners

God told Habakkuk to make the vision plain and give it to runners. Making a vision plain is easy when your complaint is clear. Making a vision plain is not just about what I see, but what I feel about what I see. I don’t just want you to see what I see, but I want you to feel what I feel. What makes people want to run with a vision isn’t intellectual, it’s emotional, and your complaint provides the emotional energy you need to inspire other runners.

Sadly, many pulpits are fi lled with intellect but are devoid of emotion. Passion rules the universe. Without passion nobody becomes a runner. Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know. Where this ratio is reversed, passionate people are viewed as odd or highly strung and told to calm down and chill out. But the last thing some of you reading this need to do is calm down! Don’t ever try to calm down about things you feel deeply passionate about, those things are to do with your destiny.

Runners

Pastors frequently ask me how I get people to run with the vision, so they can understand how to get people to run with theirs. My answer always includes an explanation of the fact that it is not our job to ‘get people to run with our vision’. Our job is simply to communicate our vision effectively. Then, who runs may be a shock to us! I found that during our ‘crossing over’ as a church, many of my so called leaders didn’t move, but many others took off like a sprinter from the blocks, heralding the vision because they shared the complaint.

There’s a runner for every vision and a vision for every runner. God is in the business of matching runners with vision.

Everybody should be running but not everybody runs the same. People need to find their race, find their distance and style. In the church some will be sprinters with an ability to move fast in the early stages of outworking a vision. Others will be hurdlers who are built for overcoming problems. Some will be long distance marathon runners who have an ability to stick with a thing for years without wavering. Many projects fail because we entrust them to the wrong kind of runners. Don’t put short attention span sprinters in charge of marathon projects. Don’t ask people to start up a project if they’re not good under the starter gun. Don’t ask people to troubleshoot and problem solve, who are not gifted at jumping hurdles. There are runners for every aspect of the vision. What kind of runner are you?

To every leader reading this I want to say, stop trying to give the vision to sitters, sleepers and vision tasters. Give the vision to runners who are simply complainers with a vision of how it can be fixed. Keep running towards that vision and never lose touch with the complaint that fuelled it, because without a complaint your vision will perish.

1 Habakkuk 2:2
2 Jeremiah 12:1-4
3 Ruth 1:14