This Isn’t Working Anymore (Part 1)
“This isn’t working anymore…“
Too many churches keep running the same plays that used to work, even when the results have clearly changed. Ministry is a moving target, and what worked in 2010 doesn’t automatically work in 2026. The ministry landscape has shifted, and it is time to make some upgrades.
At The Unstuck Group, one of our core values is “Make It Better,” and we are committed to practicing what we preach. So, in this series, we’re being honest about where we’ve had to upgrade our own thinking and why we think you should too.
In this episode, I’m joined by Tiffany Deluccia, our Director of Business Development, to discuss a topic that might be one of the most talked about, but least understood topics in ministry: the difference between vision and direction. And why, in this era, we’ve learned that clear direction wins.
- The Problem with “Organizational Statement Clutter”
- The Design Flaw in the Traditional Format of Vision Statements
- Creating Concrete, Current and Actionable Direction
If you don’t know the problem, you can’t know the strategy. You can have a beautifully worded vision and still have no idea what you’re actually trying to fix. [episode 447] #unstuckchurch Share on X Specificity creates accountability. [episode 447] #unstuckchurch Share on X Clarity about right now is more valuable than inspiration about someday. [episode 447] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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Transcript
Sean:
If you’re a ministry leader, you are simultaneously doing all your organization and administrative tasks while also doing your ministry tasks. And sometimes those two things don’t actually feel the same. If that’s the place that you’re in, I wanna tell you about Planning Center. Here’s the deal. Planning Center is a church management software that handles all of the administrative stuff that seems to eat up your week: tracking first time guests, scheduling volunteers, managing check-ins, event signups, online giving. It’s all in one place, which means you’re not bouncing between five different platforms trying to figure out where that new family’s contact info ended up. And honestly, the best thing about it is that it frees you up to actually focus on people instead of spreadsheets. If you haven’t tried it yet, you can get started for free if you go to planningcenter.com.
Well welcome to the Unstuck Church podcast. I’m Sean, your host, and today we’re kicking off a new series that has a bit of a different vibe than what you are used to from us. And to help me navigate this series, I’m joined by Tiffany Deluccia. Tiffany’s official title at The Unstuck Group is Director of Business Development, which is accurate, technically Tiffany. But honestly, Amy and I have kind of landed a better description. Tiffany’s basically the wizard behind the curtain. She’s our integrator, the person who figures out how all of the moving pieces of Unstuck actually fit together, and more importantly, actually keep moving. If something’s working right around here, there’s a reasonable chance that Tiffany has had something to do with it. She’s usually not on this side of the microphone, though, so Tiffany, welcome. Good to have you out here in the open today.
Tiffany:
Thanks, Sean. It’s good to be back on the podcast or on this side of the Wizard Curtain.
Sean:
So today, in this new series, we’re kicking this conversation off, and honestly, this one takes a little bit of courage for us to put together. It’s called, This Isn’t Working anymore, and we have some ministry upgrades to talk through for this new era. So here’s the premise. Tiffany, you’ve been on the team here at Unstuck for 12 years. I’ve been on the team here for nine years, and some of the ways that we’ve been coaching churches over that time, we’ve had to rethink. Not because we’re just making it up as we go or because we’ve gotten bored, but because ministry is a moving target and what worked in 2010 doesn’t automatically work in 2026. So in this series, we’re being honest about where we’ve had to upgrade our own thinking and why we think that churches should too.
Tiffany:
And we’re starting the series with a topic that might be one of the most difficult because it’s one of the most talked about, but least understood topics in ministry. We’re gonna be talking specifically about vision, and the difference between vision and direction and why in this era we’ve learned that clear direction wins.
Sean:
And I want to name what makes this a little bit uncomfortable, because we’re not talking about churches that have skipped vision entirely. We’re talking about churches that did the work. They have a mission statement on the wall. They have their core values listed, maybe in the bulletin there’s this big, bold, inspiring vision for the future. They did everything that the leadership books have told them to do, or maybe some recently what chat GPT told them to do. But here they are still feeling stuck.
Tiffany:
So let’s dive into it. I mean, really decades of leadership culture told churches they need a compelling vision, some big aspirational picture of where God is taking them. But somewhere down the line we sense something changed. So can you unpack a little bit about why we’ve been coaching churches differently, for the last couple years?
Sean:
I mean, of course, you know, nothing’s wrong with wanting to have a bold, compelling vision. They definitely have their place, and we’ll talk about that more in a minute. The problem that we continue to see is attempts at vision that instead of rallying the people of the church, the staff, the volunteers, the attenders, they create little or no action and response. And there are two main buckets of visions like these, again, that produce little to no action.
The first bucket contains vision statements that are really another mission statement. For context, you know, we talk about a church’s mission as their purpose, why they exist. And we believe Jesus gave the church its mission back in Matthew 28. So, you know, churches put their own words to Matthew 28, and that’s their mission, their mission statement again, why they exist. Then they create another version of this. And they’re often beautiful statements that describe an aspirational future of where they want their church to be moving and going. But I’m not sure that they create clarity and that rallying call that we’re wanting vision to create.
Tiffany:
They do usually have a lot of alliteration, though, and people like alliteration.
Sean:
That’s true.
Tiffany:
Could you give us some examples? I think mission and vision are those words that people have a, they bring a lot of their own experiences to. What they think we’re even talking about.
Sean:
And those two words get really confused sometimes. Right? So a few examples that I looked up before our recording. One church said their mission statement was Out of love for Jesus and people, the mission of Grace Church is to make mature disciples of Jesus Christ in ever increasing numbers. That’s their mission statement.
Tiffany:
Beautiful.
Sean:
Their vision statement was Grace Church is a diverse, growing family of Christian believers who celebrate God’s grace and proclaim the message of Jesus Christ in word deed to the communities of greater Minneapolis and around the world. That’s a mouthful. Right?
Tiffany:
Now we know, now we know.
Sean:
Another church said their mission statement was to reach the loss, build community, grow disciples, serve our neighbors, and in all things worship God. And their vision statement was to see our community awakened by the glory of Jesus Christ. In one last example, a church said their mission statement was to make Jesus centered disciples for God’s glory. The vision statement was, we desire to see our community transformed by God’s grace and become passionate for God’s glory. So you can see in there that there’s actually not a significant difference between the two statements.
Tiffany:
Right.
Sean:
And the vision statement almost becomes a restatement of the mission, or we’re just saying it in a different way. It also doesn’t specify exactly what success looks like if you achieve the vision. That brings me to the second bucket of vision statements that are so kind of long range or aspirational that nobody feels the urgency around them. So like, we wanna reach the world for Jesus. Those vision statements, they’re beautifully worded and they often reflect the heart of what we wanna do, but unfortunately, they have no bearing on what the church does on Monday morning. They have no clear articulated set of goals and what success looks like. So, some examples of that to see the gospel saturate our region until hope, justice, and compassion define every life, to see the church become the most trusted life-giving presence in every community it touches or one other to be part of a future where no one feels unseen, unloved, or disconnected from God’s family.
And here’s the harder truth. You know, many churches are experiencing what we’ve called in the past organizational statement clutter. They have a mission statement, they have a vision statement, they have those core values, the taglines, strategic pillars for the church on and on. But at some point, no one can remember what any of them mean because they’re all so similar. And leaders spend more time trying to align language than they do actually making decisions.
Tiffany:
How many times do you ask somebody to name the core values of their church and they get to three of the five and then completely stall out?
Sean:
Exactly. Yes.
Tiffany:
A hundred percent. So, you’re saying we are not rethinking vision as a concept, but the traditional format of vision statements and the way churches have adopted them has a design flaw.
Sean:
That’s right. And we actually addressed a version of this topic way back in episode 267, so if you’re interested in listening to that, our founder, Tony Morgan, made the case that vision statements tend to misfire in four predictable ways. One, they’re too nebulous; two, they’re too broad; three, they’re not future focused enough. And then four, they’re just essentially another mission statement in disguise. And you can see how that played out in all of the examples that I just gave. So if you haven’t heard that one and you’re interested in listening, go back to 267.
But here’s what we’ve learned since then, especially I would say post pandemic, right. A lot of things have changed in our culture. There’s even an even more kind of fundamental issue here. The time horizon, the time projection is all wrong. So we used to say, I don’t know if you remember the days, but you know, we would do strategic planning and we would talk about what’s our vision for 10 years from now. And then we kind of condensed that what’s our vision for five years from now? And then we move to, okay, maybe three to five years from now. And we’re not even sure that three years is realistic giving, how fast the ministry landscape, cultural landscape is shifting. And the churches we’re working with right now, they don’t need a picture of what things might look like 10 years from now. They need to know what they’re doing in the next 12 months.
Tiffany:
Well, and that could actually be backed up by data in our last unstuck church report back in Q1, we covered in episode 441, one of the things declining churches self-reported as a top barrier to growth was lack of vision. Not lack of a vision statement.
Sean:
Right.
Tiffany:
But an actual unclear sense of where the church is headed and what it needs to prioritize right now. But if you compare that to growing churches, the number one barrier was running out of physical space. So if we think about that for a second, growing churches have outward facing problems. Stuck churches have inward facing ones. And vague long range vision is one of the things quietly feeding that inward drift. So the issue isn’t the vision doesn’t matter. It’s that when vision is too fuzzy or too far out, it doesn’t actually help anyone make a decision on a Monday morning about what they should be doing. And we’ve seen, especially recently, that’s where churches start losing ground, not necessarily dramatically, but just slowly, quietly one deferred decision at a time.
Sean:
That data really does tell the story when the people in your church can’t articulate what the church is focused on right now, you know, not five years from now, but right now, your momentum just quietly dies in the background. The other thing I’d also like to drill down on before we move on, with growing churches who are facing barriers like physical spaces, is that you still need to clarify direction. If good problems are associated with rapid growth and those are creating feelings of tension or frustration or lack of clarity on your team, you still have a direction problem to clarify there.
In seasons of growth, you can’t necessarily just rest on the fact that you have a clear vision for the future, alignment around the big picture of who you are as a church, you have to set a very practical direction for solving problems that are right in front of you, because especially in growing churches, those problems feel so urgent. I mean, those are problems like, we didn’t have enough kids space this weekend and we had to turn families away. There were people who showed up in our parking lot and there were three or four parking spaces left and they turn around and just drove right out. So those are real everyday problems that are right in front of you that you have to have clear direction around how you solve those. So the alignment work gets very specific to the initiatives and the decisions that need to be made in the months that are stretching just right in front of you, think, you know, the next 10, 11, maybe 12 months.
Tiffany:
That makes me think, this may be a silly analogy, but you could put the destination where you’re going into your GPS and know that it’s pulling up a map that tells you it’s gonna get there. But if you don’t look at the first turn you need to make or you’re not looking ahead to what exit you’re gonna get off in 50 miles. You’re still not gonna get where you’re trying to go.
Sean:
Absolutely. Well, let’s say too, you start running outta gas or you need to go over for a charge?
Tiffany:
Right?
Sean:
And there’s not, now you’re looking for a gas station on the map. Well, that’s gonna take us three miles out of our current trajectory. Now we have to make some adaptation and are we prepared for that? We have a sense of where we want to be going, but do we have the plans in place today to get us through those things we need to navigate to ultimately land in the spot we want to in the future?
Tiffany:
Okay. So what’s the upgrade? What’s the shift that we’re making if the traditional vision statement isn’t the answer? How are we coaching churches now? What do we think they should be doing instead?
Sean:
Well, we’re not saying completely ditch the vision statement if it’s helpful to you, but the examples that I gave are more like a reference point to where the church wants to go. The upgrade is actually just clearly defining direction and revisiting that every 12 months. And that direction has to be concrete. It has to be current, and it has to be actionable. So at least every 12 months you should be answering the question, what are the bold and measurable moves that we need to make to move our mission forward? It’s not asking where you’ll be in 10 years, it’s asking what has to change, improve, or get added right now for this church to stay an unstuck church. And it starts with agreeing, I think, on the primary problem you’re trying to solve. Tony made this point back in episode 267, if you don’t know the problem, you can’t know the strategy. You can have a beautifully worded vision and still have no idea what you’re actually trying to fix.
Tiffany:
So it’s less about writing a better vision statement and more about really answering a different question altogether. I think that reframe is actually really freeing because it kind of takes the pressure off trying to craft the perfect sentence that’s going to really inspire people. It puts the emphasis back on doing the actual diagnostic work.
Sean:
Right, yeah. So again, question’s not where do we wanna be in 10 years or five years? The question is, what’s the one big problem that we’re uniquely positioned to solve in our community? And then what do we need to prioritize in the next 12 months or so to make real progress on that problem? And when churches can answer those two questions, well, something begins to shift there. You know, decisions get easier, honestly. Leaders stop arguing about strategy because the direction is clear. The budget conversation changes because you know what you’re trying to fund. And here’s what I’ve seen. When direction is clear and near term, it actually creates more urgency for churches, which long-range vision really never does. You know, Sundays keep coming, ministry never stops and a 10-year vision will never feel as pressing as what’s in your inbox today, but a 12-month measurable plan? That has teeth for a lot of leaders.
Tiffany:
You also mentioned the idea of bold moves. Can you say more about what that looks like in practice? Like how that plays out differently than the vision statement?
Sean:
So a vision statement might say something like, you know, we envision a community transformed by the love of Christ and that’s beautiful, but it doesn’t tell anyone what to do next week, right? A bold move sounds more like we’re going to launch a second service by September, or we’re going to restructure our group’s ministry so that 60% of our attendees are in community by the end of this year. Or, you know, we’re gonna hire our first Next Gen director and build a discipleship pathway for students. Those types of things are decisions, they’re directional and they create accountability. Right? You know, whether you did that or not,
Tiffany:
Oh, that’s so good. How do you know with a lot of those vision statements whether you ever did that or not. Right?
Sean:
Exactly. They’re inspirational but not measurable. And those statements I just mentioned, they come from knowing your problem. You know, if your problem is that families with kids are attending once and not coming back, then your bold moves are going to look very different than a church whose problem is that they’ve plateaued and their congregation is aging.
Tiffany:
Well, we never like to leave leaders with a really compelling diagnosis of the problem and no prescription. So it’s one thing to say your vision statement isn’t working, it’s another to say, here’s what to do Monday morning instead. So walk us through what this actually looks like on the ground.
Sean:
So I mean, we encourage leaders to start by just calling a timeout on the vision statement conversation. You know, at least just for a season, resist the pressure to try to develop more inspirational language within your church. Instead of that, get your team in the room and ask that question, what’s the big problem that we’re trying to solve? And honestly, not problems, problem singular. If you can’t agree on that, you have an answer for why you’re feeling stuck right now. So after you answer that question, then ask, what are the two or three bold moves we need to make in the next 12 months to make real progress on that problem? And then write those down. And specifically to that, assign owners, you’re gonna write down the problem, but then you’re gonna say, here’s who’s responsible for that. And then put those problems in your budget. Make sure you’re allocating time, people and resources to those challenges.
That’s essentially what the Unstuck Process guides churches through. It’s not starting with a vision and working down. It’s starting with an honest assessment of this is where the church is today, agreeing on the problem that you’re trying to solve. And then building a 12-month plan with planning rhythms, ongoing rhythms, around the moves that are actually gonna create momentum in your church. And I wanna make sure that we’re clear on this, that this is harder than it sounds because it requires real alignment at the leadership level. You know, a vision statement that’s broad enough can get unanimous buy-in pretty easily. You know, if we say we wanna see our community transformed, who’s gonna vote against that? Nobody. Right?
But the moment that you get specific, the moment that you say, our bold move is this year, we’re gonna add a second or third service and restructure our kids’ ministry around it, now you’ve got real stakes. Now somebody in the room is thinking about the volunteers that need to be recruited, the budget that’s gonna need to shift and, maybe your sacred Saturday night service that you’re gonna have to sunset in order to do that. Right? So the specificity creates accountability. And honestly, accountability makes people nervous. So a lot of churches don’t drift towards vague vision because they lack passion. They actually drift there because it feels safer. You know, nobody can tell you that you failed to reach a community transformed by the love of Christ.
Tiffany:
Right?
Sean:
But they can absolutely tell you that you didn’t launch that second or third service by September. So what we see is that a lot of churches, this is where they stall, they get to the point of identifying a bold move and then they pull back because somebody on the team isn’t on board, or because they’re afraid of offending a donor or because it feels too risky. And the vision just stays vague, not because the leaders don’t care, but because specificity is vulnerable. And so that’s why I think this is why an outside perspective matters so much. When you’re inside the system, it’s very hard to see it clearly. You’re managing personalities and history and political dynamics that really can cloud your judgment on this. So one of the most common things that we hear from churches after going through the Unstuck Process was, we knew what we needed to do, we just needed someone to help us say it out loud and make a plan for it.
Tiffany:
For churches who’ve been following the Unstuck Group for a long time, this might feel like a significant shift from what you’ve heard us say before about vision, and we wanna be honest about that, but we don’t really see it as a reversal of our earlier position. It’s just an upgrade. We’ve made a real revision based on what we’ve learned working with hundreds of churches over the last several years, and we’ve made this change in the Unstuck process, something we’re guiding churches to do differently than we used to because the ministry landscape has shifted and what worked before just doesn’t necessarily produce the same results. So we’d rather be honest about that than keep coaching something that isn’t serving churches well. And that’s kind of the whole premise of the series. We’re not above updating our own playbook, and we thought this one was worth updating you on.
Sean:
That’s right.
Tiffany:
Before we wrap up today, do you have any final thoughts you want to share?
Sean:
I think if I could leave listeners with one thing today, it’s this, you know, clarity about right now is more valuable than inspiration about someday.
Tiffany:
That’s good.
Sean:
Your church doesn’t need a better vision statement. It needs an honest answer to the question, what’s the one problem we’re trying to solve and what are we gonna do about it in the next 12 months? And if you can answer that clearly and get your team aligned around it, you will make more progress in the next year than you’ve made in the last five. And I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. That’s what we see over and over again with churches that go through this work. And don’t wait until things slow down to do this work. Because in ministry they won’t slow down. The churches that are thriving right now are the ones that made time to get clear on direction before they felt that pressure, not afterwards.
Tiffany:
Well, if today’s conversation stirred something for you, if you found yourself thinking, yeah, we’ve got a wall full of statements and no real clarity on what we’re actually doing this year, that’s really worth paying attention to. The Unstuck Group exists to help churches get off that hamster wheel. Our consulting process is built around exactly what Sean described, honest assessment, naming the real problem, building a 12-month plan around the bold moves that will actually create momentum, not someday, but now. So we’ve walked with more than 750 churches through this now, which is crazy. And what we hear on the other side almost every time is some version of, we knew what we needed to do, we just needed help saying it out loud and making a plan. And if that sounds familiar, let’s talk. You can start a conversation at theUnstuckGroup.com, and be sure to go to theunstuckgroup.com/podcast to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode in this series when it releases next week.
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