Our edition theme is “vision.” Can you share your vision as CEO of Compassion International?

I’m so grateful for the opportunity to talk with you on this topic of vision because it is such an important part of leadership. Ministries, and organizations of any kind, don’t just drift into delivering outcomes and accomplishing their mission. That’s where the courage and influence of leadership to create and communicate a picture of the future that inspires passion in your team comes into play. This is a relevant topic for us all.

I needed to get in touch with God’s vision for Compassion.

Personally, when I came to Compassion in 2013, I was fortunate to be joining a well-established ministry that had been experiencing significant and steady growth for over a decade before I arrived. So, I had a strong sense that the organization didn’t need my vision. Instead, I needed to get in touch with God’s vision for Compassion. To do that, I started out by doing a lot of listening and learning. I really wanted to understand the context I was walking into and where God might want to take Compassion in the future, which would then lead to a better understanding of what would be needed to get there.

A Strong Foundation for a Greater Harvest

Throughout that process, I got a clear sense that God had uniquely positioned Compassion to holistically serve the needs of children living in poverty. I also had a deepening conviction that his past blessings had created a strong foundation that was meant to support an even greater harvest in the future. We all wanted to do more in achieving our mission to release children from poverty in Jesus’ name. So, the current vision for Compassion is one in which we are working to expand our reach to be more relevant to the massive problem of global poverty that we have been called to address. We want to advance life outcomes with more children and youth, and we want to be able to do that more quickly than ever before.

How have you seen Compassion change relative to vision since you joined the organization in 2013?

God has consistently brought leaders to Compassion who have a heart and conviction that we must do more to address the needs of the 170 million children who are living in poverty within the 29 program countries we serve. While we celebrate every one of the 2.3 million children and youth we are currently blessed to serve, we also recognize that’s only about one percent of the need. So, I’m deeply grateful that there is such strong internal alignment around our vision to reach more children more quickly.

However, vision comes with demands. And for Compassion, our vision has led us on a journey in recent years to build and expand our systems, capabilities and support infrastructure. Efforts to empower our frontline churches to achieve the best possible outcomes within their unique contexts have been key in this, because we must ensure that what we’re scaling is the right thing – it has to be effective in achieving life transformation for those we serve.

We have also undertaken redesign efforts to significantly grow our marketing capabilities, structures and resources. And we have invested in our support functions – IT, HR, Finance, Risk and Legal – to elevate them beyond being quality service providers to become indispensable strategic enablers. In many not-for-profit settings, these very capabilities are often neglected, which keeps the ministry from scaling. However, for Compassion, we have prioritized these transformational efforts to help achieve our vision to connect more churches on the frontlines of poverty with more supporters in the resourced world who want to respond to the immense needs of children living in poverty.

 What are keys to communicating vision well with your teams? How have you and your leadership team sought to do that at Compassion?

There are several things I consider when thinking about defining and casting vision. The first step is to be clear about the problem your vision is addressing. Is it an injustice that needs to end? A weakness that needs to be strengthened? A former mentor of mine used to call this precursor to vision “a holy discontent.” I love that.

What is the holy discontent that you want people to join you in addressing?

What is the holy discontent that you want people to join you in addressing? Sometimes you have to live in the problem awhile to see the vision emerge. And that’s why the next step is discernment. This is where we really need to seek God’s heart. What does he want for your organization or the team you lead? Where does he want you to grow? As you live in those kinds of questions, God will begin to give you promptings about his desired future.

The next two steps are about understanding your unique organizational context. You need to be clear about the environment into which you are casting your vision. What is the history of your organization or team? What are the recent wins and losses? How is the morale? You also need to consider the timing of when to share your vision. It might be the right vision, but your team and environment are not ready to receive and act on it.

The final part of all this is to choose compelling words that will clearly describe the vision and resonate strongly with your community. It is important that you thoughtfully hone your words to find the ones that will really stick. Test with small groups and keep improving until you eventually land the right words that help people see themselves in the vision and move them to action.

How do you develop your personal vision as a leader? What were some key influences in that journey for you?

My answer to this comes from a shift in my own understanding that occurred more than a decade into my leadership journey. I used to think that what I was doing for God was the most important thing. But now I realized that the most important contribution that any of us can make to the kingdom of Heaven is not what we do, but in fact the people we are becoming.

Here's why I say that. Over what has now been more than 30 years of serving as a CEO, I’ve had a front-row seat to experiencing and witnessing how living in the middle of even very successful, influential and life-changing ministry can lead to compromising your soul. Of course, no one wants it to be that way or ever starts out intending it to be that way, but it happens far too often.

I think there’s a general unspoken assumption that if a ministry is successful then that must mean that the soul of the leader is where it should be. Sadly, we all know that’s not necessarily true. So, as I’ve observed leadership over the long haul, including the impact it can have on my own life, my personal vision has become grounded in the fact that we must guard our hearts. It’s all about who we are privately becoming, not what we are publicly doing. And when we get that right and remain truly centered on Jesus, the doing of ministry will flow naturally as the fruit of who we are in him and not out of human-striving. I pray that will be true for all of us.

What are you most encouraged about in the work of Compassion today?

It’s incredibly encouraging to see how the global church is responding to the growing needs of those living in poverty. In both under-resourced and well-resourced communities, the church is running to meet the needs as only the church can.

Although our brothers and sisters in Christ who comprise the church on the frontlines of poverty continue to face so many deeply disruptive challenges – natural disasters, food insecurity, civil unrest, political upheaval and heartbreaking trials of all kinds – they are faithfully serving as a very tangible expression of the hands and feet of Jesus to those in desperate need. And on the more well-resourced side of the church, Jesus followers from around the world are responding with increasing levels of generosity. It’s an amazing blessing to witness God’s people living beyond themselves to care for the least of these.

I’m so grateful for the opportunity Compassion has been given to serve as a bridge between those two sides of the global church, both of which share a passion to see children and youth who were born into unacceptable poverty thriving toward their God-given potential.

What encouragement would you share for other ministry leaders as they pursue and communicate vision?

There are two key things in this that I’d encourage every leader to consider. The first is related to the discernment part of vision development that I talked about earlier. This is where I love Henry Blackaby’s “Experiencing God” teachings. He reminds us that God is always at work around us. Our job is not to make plans and ask God to bless them. Instead, we are to ask God to give us eyes to see what he is doing and wanting to do in the areas we lead. Then, when we adjust our plans to his plans, of course he’ll bless them because he’s already there!

The ultimate goal in developing and casting vision is to discern where God is leading and how we can get behind what he is doing. I don’t want to cast vision for my plans. But I am very interested in casting vision for God’s plans.

The second encouragement I would share is related to a leader’s personal conviction about the vision they’re casting. Your passion for the vision is critical. The words you choose and the steps you take to embed the vision in your community won’t matter if you are not deeply impassioned and personally convicted about it as a leader. It’s not about being a charismatic speaker; it’s about passion and conviction.

Your vision must burn white hot in you first.

Your vision must burn white hot in you first. And when that happens, your team will feel it and respond. They’ll begin to own it, repeat it and run with it. That’s how you’ll know your people can see themselves in the God-inspired vision that you’re championing. That’s how you’ll know it’s working. And most importantly, that’s how God’s work will be accomplished… all in his perfect timing!

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