I was the pastor of a church one time when vision statements were all the rage. Every church had to form a committee and hammer out a vision statement, a mission statement, 10-year goals, and all that stuff. Then, we had to have meetings about all these orienting statements. Afterward, we had to have more meetings to talk about the meetings we’d just had, and then more meetings about the meetings we were going to have to have to get these things done.

At some point, it felt like we were going to come up with a vision statement that said something like: “This is a congregation that cares not only about love, mercy, justice, and peace … we put our money where our mouth is: We’re a congregation that has meetings to talk about how we’re a congregation who talks about love, mercy, justice, and peace.”

And believe me when I say that it wasn’t other people forcing this whole process on me. I was the biggest cheerleader. I was convinced that I had no more considerable vocational responsibility than producing a statement we could put on literature for prospective new members—and I didn’t care how many meetings it took.

Now, I have to be clear that I actually think having an articulable vision is crucial for a congregation. A common understanding about who we are, what we care about, and why we care about it. As my old friend Steven Johns-Boehme used to say, “If you don’t know where you’re going, even an ill wind will take you there.”

But the problem with most vision statements is the extent to which they become vague approximations or unfocused wish-fulfillment statements of what a vision is. These statements are peppered with corporate-speak about “maximizing utility” and “targeting divergent constituencies” while “leveraging our brand” to “offer authentic experiences” of “industry-standard deliverables” that “achieve maximum impact” when we tell people “Jesus is nice.”

Too often, summing up what a company or a congregation are about—what’s at the soul of everything they—do is an exercise in saying dumb stuff that sounds vaguely smart but leaves everyone scratching their heads about what it all means.

But, as I say, knowing what you’re about is essential to doing good work. No argument from me. And being able to talk about it is crucial, not just the person out front, but everybody else involved too. For a congregation’s vision to mean anything (whether you have a formal statement or not), the members have to feel it in their bones. The folks in the pews have to embrace the vision.

So anyway, we came up with a vision statement at that church that went something like, “Our first priority is to equip disciples for the kingdom of God”—which wasn’t an awful start if you ask me.

But after all those meetings, and meetings about meetings, and word-smithing, and jargon-editing—when we unveiled it to the congregation, the question we got from a very vocal group was, “What gives you the right to say this is who we are? How come we weren’t invited to the meetings?”

I said, “As it turns out, you were invited. You just chose not to be part of the process—either because you weren’t paying attention or because you couldn’t be bothered to put in the work.”

What was said next can be distilled to some version of “Just because we didn’t want to be part of the process doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have the right to veto stuff we don’t like.”

“Okay,” I said, “what about it don’t you like?”

“It’s not that. It’s fine as far as it goes. Our problem is that we want to have the final say over the shape of the work we do.”

After all these years, I can understand that feeling that people want not only a focused understanding of the work but a say in whether the work is something they want to be part of.

If you’re going to sign onto something, it’s reasonable to want a pretty solid idea of what it is you’re getting yourself into.

“Wanting-to-know-what-we-signed-up-for” is precisely where we find the disciples in our text this morning.

Now, you may say, “Wait … what? Our gospel this morning didn’t say anything about the disciples.”

Good question. I swear I can’t slip anything past y’all.

If you look at what comes right before our text this morning, you’ll see that Jesus had gone up on a mountain to pray. When day came, he called his disciples together and chose twelve of them to be apostles. This is where Luke names the twelve: “Peter, Andrew, James and John, and all down the line.”

Just so we’re clear, Jesus calls the twelve apostles from among all the disciples to be his inner circle—the guys (and I say “guys” not generically, but descriptively—that is, it was actually “guys”) the guys who’re going to wander around Galilee, Samaria, and Judea with him, helping him do whatever it is he’s going to do. These are the twelve who will be there when he finally gets to Jerusalem and the political heat starts to rise.