Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
A Vision is Life

A Vision is Life

Last updated on: November 11, 2015 at 12:20 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

A Vision is Life 2015-11-11T12:20:00-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Vince Lombardi inherited a losing team with losing players and made that team one of the best football teams that ever existed. He transformed “losers” into winners. However, when he left, the Packers confused his plans and his methods with his vision.

They imitated Lombardi long after the methods and means were contrary to Lombardi’s vision: winning football games. The Packer sweep or wearing blazers and ties on the plane ride were means to getting there . . . not the vision. Times changed, Lombardi would have changed, but the Packers did not.

They lost for two decades until they hired a man like Lombardi in having a vision for the team who was not bound by Lombardi’s methods or legacy.

If we confuse our check list, our business plan, or goals with a vision, then the ministry, business, or program will perish. A vision needs an implementation plan, but those are not so hard to find. An implementation plan will never get a vision by itself.

A vision is the worthy goal for our life and for the lives of the people in our community. As such, it will tend to be general enough to adapt to changing times, but specific enough to be doable and not a mere fantasy. To give an example, our new school, The Saint Constantine School, might aspire to have a billion dollar campus in the next five years, but that is neither a vision nor a realistic business plan. A number is an outcome to a vision, so can never be part of a vision and while a number will often be part of a business plan, the plan must be constrained by reality.

A billion dollars is not a worthy vision for a human life. A goal that ignores reality sounds bold, but is merely reckless.

So why start a school, a business, or a program? The answer must not be for the sake of building the school, business, or program. Any such social structure is the means to the end and not the end. We want to build The Saint Constantine School not because we aspire to be an outstanding elementary, junior high, high school, and college program. That aspiration is unworthy of a human life if that is all there is to it. The school is a good thing and the excellence is a fine thing when it serves God and His people.

When I was a kid, Christians often talked as if what the Church needed was a “Christian ABC, CBS, or NBC.” Leave aside all other problems with this idea and just grasp that at that time what we could have done is bypass the old network structure and get in on the start of the new media revolution that is still happening. Too often we invested millions of dollars of God’s money in knock off networks that few people watched when the goal should never have been the network!

We imitated because we lacked a vision . . . having substituted a desire to imitate what the actual visionaries who built the networks had already done. This rarely (if ever!) works.

When people said they wanted a “Christian network,” what I hope they meant was that they wished to communicate Christian ideas (as they understood them) to many people. They wanted story telling, news, and event coverage that took the Christian perspective into account. In other words, they wanted to live as Christians in media. Instead of working “in the system” or recreating “the system,” a visionary would have made a new system.

Hollywood, before it was Hollywood, bypassed the old centers of media and created a new structure. The next Hollywood will not be Holy Wood.. . the old system sanctified, but communication, story telling, and information done differently and better. It is hard to catch up with an established player in any field, but much easier to bypass them. Don’t build a record company. Go digital.

But don’t be confused . . . none of that is a vision. Digital is not a vision! Instead, the vision is the reason you might go digital. The vision might even be incompatible with certain methodologies. You cannot take communion online.

The vision of The Saint Constantine School is not the methodology (classical and Socratic) or the business plan. If we ever confuse the vision with the methodology or the plan, then we might keep building old wine skins in an age when new wine is needed or is all that is available! God help us to never build Christian hula-hoops, just when everyone else has stopped using hula-hoops. God help us never to be trapped in endless imitation. Houston has many fine schools. If we merely imitate them, then we probably should join them.

So what is the vision? We aspire to produce flourishing human beings, fit citizens for the Republic, and souls prepared for Paradise now. Without God, this is impossible, but it does mean that any means can be reconsidered, old and new. Some old ways will be best, reading great texts, but some old ways will no longer work. As an Orthodox school, we might look back to the great chariot races that so moved Byzantine culture (where we find our educational roots), but chariot races no longer resonate. We live in a republic, not an empire. We have digital technology, not just pen and parchment. What is the best way to educate Houstonians now? How can we best serve the Church and the city now?

We are educating children and young adults in 2015, not 1453. We embrace the unchanging truths about humankind, while knowing that some things do change! Some of those changes are for the good and some are not so good, but we are teaching the souls God sends us, not the souls that God sent a school in 1715, 1815, or 1915!

A good education will learn from Byzantium, Antioch, Athens, Moscow, Oxford, Paris, and Rome, but exists for Americans in 2015. We are not here to recreate what has been or is, but what is needed and does not yet exist! This is living as opposed to creating a mannequin. The dummy never changes, but the living are always growing. Vision is seeing the unchanging and the changing in a living community and embracing both. Without vision, any program will kill the community and leave only an imitation of living.

Some techniques that are still best are ancient: the Socratic method. Some ideas are ancient, but have new and better ways of going about achieving those goals. A sound mind in a sound body is a good goal, but we have better means of achieving that goal than they had in 1945 due to technology and an increase in knowledge. How should “school” change?

The vision will never change, many of the means are fairly timeless, but all we would do must be to serve God, his Church, and humankind. Programs exist to serve a vision and a godly vision will always love God and people. Often we perish, because we confuse the way things have been done (and are still being done) with what should be done or will be done. We sometimes perish because we confuse our plan to achieve the vision with the vision. We imitate Socrates’ actions, but forget his reasons for his actions and so we perish.

God help us to look toward Him and develop a keen sight of how to love Him and our fellow human beings in every area of service. In my own field, it means that the school is formed for man, not man for the school! May God give us a progressive vision so we can live, really live, both now and in the age to come.

Education

Spiritual Reflections

Previous Post

October 22, 2015

I am for . . . everyone I can be - except the Chicago Bears

Next Post

October 24, 2015 Maureen O'Hara: A Pleasant Time at the Movies

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Apologetics Art Culture Education On Books On Education Philosophy Politics Pop Culture Spiritual Reflections Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 July 2025 June 2025 September 2024 July 2024 June 2024 December 2023 June 2023 September 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How long did the judges rule before kings?

Select your answer to see how you score.

400 years 300 years 200 years Approximately 350 years

Books by This Author John Mark Reynolds

See All Titles »