Plodding Visionaries

Local churches are built when humble servants commit, and remain, and serve, and do so over a period of years. Local churches are built by those Kevin DeYoung identified as “plodding visionaries.” Kevin DeYoung made says:

“It is easy to blast the church for all her failures. It is harder to live in the church day after day, year after year, with all of the ho hum, hum drum, and to slowly and consistently make a difference. What we need are fewer revolutionaries and a few more plodding visionaries. We need to ask the right questions, we need to have the right expectations, and we need to establish the right vision.…

Here is my burden for our generation: along with all of the necessary pleas we have to be earnest and intense and radical and sold out. With all of that, I want to wave the banner from Zechariah 4:10, “Do not despise the days of small things.” This is what I mean by being plodding visionaries. If you are a visionary, you don’t have your head in the sand. You are going somewhere. You are looking out. You are moving in a direction. But you are a plodder. One foot in front of the other. Many of us are attracted to a Tasmanian Devil kind of Christianity…splattering, spinning around. You get fired up—praise God for that—and you spin out like the Tasmanian Devil ready to conquer the world for Christ and you blow up into a tree somewhere.

But we need plodding visionaries.

When I wrote the book on the church I read nine books that called for a revolution. Every other day it seems like I read of a new manifesto. We may need to just simplify a little: Get on the right road and keep going. Our generation in particular is prone to radicalism without follow-through. We want to change the world and we have never changed a diaper. You want to make a difference for Christ? Here is where you can start: this Sunday, volunteer for the nursery. Say, “Here I am, pastor. What can I do to serve?”

No church can be built without plodding visionaries.”

I stole this post from CJ Mahaney who originally posted it here.