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2020 Vision, the theme of the August issue of the White Wing Messenger, coincides with a new focus for the Church of God of Prophecy from General Overseer Randall Howard and the Administrative Committee. Although Bishop Howard has introduced a set of "Core Values" for the past few years, 2020 VISION, which includes those values, will be introduced to the International Presbytery during the 86th International Assembly. In the following interview, Bishop Howard explains the concept behind 2020 Vision.
"Amazingly, it began as a need for streamlining here at the International Offices. From there, it became a prayer, a search for inspiration with the General Presbyters, then the Administrative Committee. The more we talked about it and the more we thought about it, the more we felt an inspiration that God was calling us to three central core values. As a matter of fact, at first it was just two. We just knew that we must be about the harvest; that was God's word for this church from 1994 on. And, then, because harvesting in some places was booming, we were desperate to develop leaders. That became an easy second value. Then, along the way, one of our General Presbyters said, 'You know, you believe in prayer so much, why isn't prayer another one of those core values?' And it just clicked with everyone.
"It all grew from being a streamlining focus of the International Offices to the fact that these three things are really what we all ought to be about and what we ought to be focusing our energies and efforts into. If anything is not a part of these three things, we should always be cautious in that regard so that everything we do begins to flow in this direction.
"When I first stepped into this responsibility, I read a book that was very helpful to me, and it became an inspiration for starting this journey with 2020 Vision; the book is Good to Great by Jim Collins. We did a study of it here at the International Offices, and it really grabbed me. I think the people here, particularly the ministry directors, thought it was significant. The main theme of the book is that those companies that went from being good companies to being great companies found core principles they could focus on. Over the course of four, five, or six years, as they totally devoted themselves to these core values and principles, they found that their companies started doing better and better.
"I think, for us, these core elements are our core values. So the 2020 Vision asks the question, 'What should we be thinking of for the next ten years, and what should we do to enhance the work of our ministries for the next ten years?'
"For 18 months, the Administrative Committee committed themselves to giving the highest priority to talk about strategic planning in each one of our monthly meetings. Gradually, over these 18 months, we have walked through to this point. We're not done yet, but we have fleshed the vision out to the point where we feel that this is the direction we'd like to go for the next ten years." Some churches plan for two years in advance or sometimes a five-year plan. Is it intimidating to plan for ten years?
"The idea of doing a ten-year plan kind of evolved. The '2020' designation helped us to think that way—to use that common term. The values early on were a way of focusing things, but then we realized it takes time. It's going to take time to move toward that kind of focus. In some ways, we're four years into this process already, and so it has taken time.
"Everywhere I go, I share about the core values. I was just in Honduras recently, and I shared about the core values. From the topic of core values, we saw that this wasn't a one-time Assembly thing. This isn't just a nice theme to talk about on the stage of the Assembly. This is something that needs to be committed to for a time. It may be that after ten years, God may begin to speak something else into us.
"We don't believe that God is going to change the harvest call, but it may be that we make such progress in some of these areas that God will begin to adjust and give us other words of vision along the way."
"I think everyone knows the harvest call was a dramatic influence on this Church. Though Brother Murray used 'Turning to the Harvest' as the theme for the Assembly. If you go back to 1994, we had less than 400,000 members. Today, we have, I believe, 1.5 million members around the world. Simply devoting all of our energies to the highest priority of the harvest has transformed our Church all over the world. We can also see many other ways this call has influenced us and changed us completely, but that is the major one.
"We can go back to earlier decades and look at the way that, what some called the 'Big Business' program, probably affected this Church for the next 40 years. It changed how we viewed the way we did local church ministry and International Office ministry. But this 'Turning to the Harvest' push is God's Last Days call to everyone who preaches the Gospel of Christ. That's the powerful part of it—that God's not just saying it to us. God is saying this to everybody. Let's everybody harvest and do all we can. I believe God is opening the doors of nations and opening the hearts of people—people who are lost and have never heard the Gospel. Jesus is coming back soon and, as He comes back, He wants His church to be evangelizing, building His kingdom around the earth."
"The call at the Assembly will be for every leader in the Church of God of Prophecy to consider looking at these core values and seeing how they apply to them and how they can be adapted to fit their local church ministry where they are in their context—the community they live in.
"An article that tremendously encouraged me was by Andy Stanley; it was drawn from one of his books. Stanley was saying, speaking of streamlining, that many people come up with ideas that his church, North Point, should be doing. Stanley and his team of leaders work very hard to avoid any new ministries that they do not feel are a vital part of the main vision they have. Really, I think that's what we're all about at the International Offices. We realize that the 'good' is the deadliest enemy of the 'best.' In order to do the best we can with the resources we have, and with the definite call that God has given us—these values—we must not let anything else distract us. I would say that to local churches, too.
"Sometimes local churches are trying to do everything. They're trying to act like a big church or like a megachurch when maybe God has just called them to A and B and C or maybe just A and B. As far as applying to the local churches, yes, we would like for the local church, the pastor, and his leadership team to pray over this vision and search their own hearts. If these values fit them well, then good. Or Vision 2020 will at least be a challenge and motivation to explore what their own values are. What are your values? What are the things God is calling you to do? Perhaps, since these values are so generic, most local ministries could flow out of these. Even though it's harvesting, there are a million-plus ways to go about doing harvesting.
"Hearing a voice from leadership to affirm these things is the main thing. What we're seeing, at the General Presbyter level and then at the state/regional/national level, is that our guys are already giving much more focus to leadership development and the key points of harvest. Under the harvest value, we have four key points (church planting, developing strong local churches, reaching the young harvest, and world mission participation). We can see that a focus is already taking place at some levels of leadership. Driving it to the local church, we don't want to be dictatorial or bureaucratic. We''re simply interested in offering this to them. They can take it as, 'Now we understand the vision and the values of the Church.' Or if they want to pick the vision up and use it in their own strategic plan, that would be a blessing, too."
"Yes, it's not like a new leader has come in, so we need a new program to package and present to the people. As a matter of fact, I have not wanted to do that. Some asked me as we stepped into this new responsibility, 'Are we coming to the first Assembly that I moderated with some new program?' I think they had in mind something splashy. The thing I identify with so much about Good to Great was there was never in any of these companies a splashy marketing, PR drive about any of it. Some of the companies did not even realize that they were transforming their company. They just found four or five key things that must be priority. We're more interested in a true commitment to some priorities that we will act on every time we make decisions about money, make decisions about resources, and make decisions about leadership. We will be making those decisions in the light of our values."
"Maybe the bigger question is how culture has changed. We were in a culture of top leadership and standardization across the organization so that ministries were created in the International Offices, and local churches received them and implemented them as they had been written and given. An illustration of that is when I came to these Offices, I was appointed International Sunday School Director. So developing an annual Sunday school campaign for local churches was a part of that Office. We don't do that anymore. So yes, we've changed, but the reason we changed is that culture has changed, and local churches don't want what they perceive as cookie-cutter programming anymore so that every church across the world is supposed to be doing it.
"In Brother Murray's era, there was talk of the International Offices being a resource center. We've seen benefit in moving in that direction while, at the same time, I think we've seen some weaknesses from that. Underlying it all, whether it's the old culture or something else, service is the key word.
"This Church grows from local churches. Are we serving them? The second key word about the International Offices is connection. We are an international body in 130 nations, 12,000 preaching points, and we plant two new churches every day and a thousand people get saved everyday. But what keeps us together as one family? What unites us so that we are not a totally different and distinct animal everywhere we are located in the world? It's something about the International Offices and the leadership of this Church; they bring that connectivity and identity factor and the family DNA that can be seen anywhere in the world."
"Every level of office that is not a local church has that responsibility in some regard. The General Presbyters are a crucial level of connectivity. Articulating our vision like the 2020 Vision helps them have hooks to hang our connectivity on.
"We're all about harvest, leadership development, and becoming a prayer movement. It helps us to move together instead of experiencing a drift apart. It would be easy for a continent in its own context to drift into its own identity, but vision and leadership will be the factor to help us."
"Concerning the vision, the mission segments are a bit lengthy. They're not exactly something you can write on the wall and memorize. But we do have a motto, and we want to use that motto—'Glorifying God Through Prayer, the Harvest, and Leadership Development.' That motto gets it out there in one sentence. It tells people, succinctly, what this Church is all about.
"The mission and the vision actually capture 12 points of our foundation that I think form our identity and what kind of a people God has called us to be. This is expressed in the booklet that we presented in the 2008 Assembly, Foundations for Facing Forward."
