What’s Next, and Why?

In his essay, Finding the Right Vision, Burt Nanus explains that every organization must at some point ask, “What’s next, and why?”

For Peoples Church, what’s next is articulating our vision. Why? Because ultimately our church vision will help define our mission. Said another way, our vision identifies the horizon while our mission outlines the work we do to reach that horizon.

Our vision will also answer these two questions in a larger sense. We should always be able to answer “What’s next, and why?” by looking at our vision.

If our vision is for everyone in Cedar Rapids to have shelter, our mission could be to build a homeless shelter in an underserved area of the city. When that’s done, we look back to our vision to inspire a new mission. Perhaps next we do something to address the underlying causes of homelessness. When that’s done, we revisit the vision again, and so on.

But visions can change in the same way times change and people change. We must revisit the vision and sometimes revise it in order for it to stay relevant to our present community.

In May, we worked on identifying our church’s values. In June, we will kick off the work to identify our church’s vision based on those values. And the first vision activity will be a party!

On Wednesday, June 28 at 6:30 PM, all Peoples people are invited to come party like it’s 2027. 10 years from now, what stories do we want to tell about our church community’s accomplishments? Where do we want to be, and what do we want to look back on?

Come party like it’s 2027 at Peoples on June 28, share your future stories about our faith community, and help us create our church’s vision.