Converge MidAtlantic leader helps churches find their vision

Christ Community Church was working through a season of change, so pastor Kevin Wing eagerly embraced a Vision Day for the upstate New York congregation. 

The Converge MidAtlantic church had already formed its vision and mission statements in recent years, but it wasn’t making progress in its community. 

“We were stuck as the neighborhood changed, and the church changed and aged and people moved away,” he said. 

Only a few thousand of Lockport’s 20,000 residents attend church regularly. The Erie Canal town has blue-collar roots and a high population living below the poverty line. Christ Community Church’s building is in the same neighborhood as many who struggle. 

Christ Community asked Wing to be their interim pastor in 2021. Two years later, he agreed to be their pastor.  

“We’re a church that was trying to rediscover ourselves,” Wing added. 

Help is always available for churches

All that change in the church and the town gave Wing confidence that Vision Day was a good tool. So Jason Allison, Converge MidAtlantic’s director of church strengthening, spent a March day with the church’s team.  

Dale Sellers of the 95 Network created the Vision Day process to give church leaders education and assets for practical ministry. Sellers trained Allison to offer Vision Days so church leaders and staff could clarify their church’s vision and develop a plan of action. 

Related: See other strength building resources available through Converge MidAtlantic. 

In March, Allison facilitated a discussion on Christ Community Church’s history, current constraints and target demographic. Then, he stimulated more discussion that led to a three-year vision around the church’s mission, including core actions for growth and next steps. 

“This plan gave me a process,” Wing said. “I thought we would get bogged down at a lot of places.” 

Instead, they finished the day with measurable outcomes, a plan and a process for acting on a clearer understanding of their neighbors’ needs and desires. After each church’s Vision Day is complete, Allison coaches its pastor for 12 months to help make progress on the identified next steps and overcome surprise barriers. 

What kind of church does a Vision Day? 

Allison has done about 12 Vision Days with churches. Some were struggling or weak, while others thrived and sought to reach another level of fruitfulness and faithfulness.  

He said Vision Day is uniquely designed for churches under 500, especially those with just one pastor or a pastor working with a few staff members and leaders. 

“I don’t come into a vision day with a preset idea about what their vision is or should be,” Allison said. “I come in with a system that asks them several questions and brainstorms what God is calling them to.” 

I’d do that again

Wellspring, a large church in southern New Jersey, had a Vision Day a few years ago. But staff transitions, a changing leadership culture and ongoing adjustments after the coronavirus pandemic moved them to do it again, pastor Jason Coache said. 

The second time, Vision Day made a big difference for Wellspring. After discussing what was working and what was not working, they identified new opportunities and developed quarterly goals that fed into one-year goals. 

“Jason is very sensitive,” Coache said. “He’s a good facilitator of the conversation. It was really good to have him go through it with us.” 

Objective assessments make Vision Day work for different churches

That support from Allison also appealed to Joshua Sorrows. He pastors Harvest Church, a South Carolina congregation that was a year old when they asked for a Vision Day. 

One of Sorrows’ concerns for Harvest was the risk of the church growing complacent as they reached the one-year mark. He wanted the church to celebrate all God had done and envision a future that required prayer, unity and clarity. 

Sorrows highly regards Allison’s diverse exposure to different churches around the country. Sorrows added that one of Allison’s most vital contributions is objectively evaluating ministries without an agenda or competing loyalties. 

After the process, Sorrows said the team had greater unity and clear actions to pursue. 

“We had very workable, tangible goals and steps to follow,” he said. “Everybody heard it the same way in the room.” 

That’s what Allison wants to offer every church he supports.  

“It’s so you help people discover their calling and the way God has created them to be salt and light in their communities where they live, work and play,” he said. 

New York church goes from mostly stuck to making progress 

Kevin Wing said Vision Day accomplished every bit of what he hoped and more. His church’s leaders rediscovered themselves, got out of their stuckness and discovered the values of their neighbors. 

Wing is particularly grateful that Allison, who uses wall-size sticky notes during Vision Day, takes photos of them and converts them into PDFs. Then, he e-mails the files to the pastor, which Wing uses to refresh his memory, stay on track and guide his coaching sessions with Allison. 

“I have used those images of those worksheets in two or three settings, and I’m sure I’ll use it some more,” Wing said. “I have used those in more than one way to communicate what we did that day to try to let as many people as I can know what went on.” 

Converge is a movement of churches working to help people meet, know and follow Jesus. We do this by starting and strengthening churches together worldwide. For 170 years Converge has helped churches bring life change to communities in the U.S. and around the world through church planting and multiplication, leadership training and global missions.