Carroll urges council to shun distractions and follow vision
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman Online, September 30, 2003
MONTREAT, N.C. – Vernon Carroll of Frenchtown, Mont., chairman of the General Assembly Council, has urged council members to shun the distractions and stick to their calling as church leaders.
Vernon Carroll“We are distracted in many ways by other agendas, other pretenders, most of which are very detrimental to our leadership,” Carroll said at the council’s September meeting. “Your leadership, your calling, is the most important calling for leading the church into the future. … You were properly called, properly elected to lead.”
Carroll, a lay elder, gave a part-sermon, part pep talk to his colleagues on the council. Referring to several Bible verses, he focused on vision and leadership.
He quoted Isaiah 43:19 “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” He added, “The Scripture suggests that while God is obviously at work, many of us are not aware of it,” he said.
Vision
Carroll described vision as “a clear understanding of what your organization should achieve. Vision is passion. It is the force that drives us.”
“True leaders with true vision are obsessed with the idea that they are meant to achieve something meaningful,” he said, adding that the council members have communicated that idea to the executive committee through the various self-assessments.
“You clearly, as leaders of the church, believe you came here to do something meaningful,” he said, noting that when he became a member of the council he believed that “somewhere, sometime I would contribute to the wellness of this council and hopefully to the church as a whole.”
He said that leaders with vision “may even be offensive to those less motivated. … If you feel that way you are a leader with vision. If not, you are managers trying to maintain the status quo. I don’t want to maintain the status quo.”
Qualities of leadership
Carroll spoke to the council about some qualities of leadership. “There are a lot of people who can influence other people, but some lack character,” he said. “A leader must exhibit qualities of a sincere walk with God.”
He quoted Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.”
“The vision spoken of here is really revelation,” said Carroll. “Without a revelation of God, the people perish … Scripture suggests that vision is more than just what the eye can see. It’s God’s vision.”
“Leadership requires us to be a prophetic voice in the world. Frankly, I am uncomfortable with that concept,” he said. But then he asked, “Who else can be the prophetic voice, but the council?”
When looking at the word “perish,” Carroll said that could mean an opportunity missed, which “is more disturbing and heart wrenching than actually dying. … God has laid out a table for us, but because we wouldn’t hear, we missed out.”
“I am concerned with council right now. We are at that place – not defeated – the church is alive and well, but facing challenges,” said Carroll, “But within those challenges is a great opportunity. There is no doubt in my mind that this council was chosen to lead at a time such as this.”
Carroll took note of the council’s own time pressures and said the council should be “very sensitive to God’s time. Our time is measured time. Our time is a time that never allows us to forget ourselves. Contrast that with God’s time, when we forget ourselves and focus on God and what he wants us to do.”
He urged the council to be sensitive to the appropriate time to do things, over and above the scheduled time to do things.
Carroll also spoke of faith. “I’m not sure we aren’t on some kind of wilderness path ourselves … sometimes I think we are on the threshold.”
He said the council has taken some bold steps in the way it works, only to sidestep or back away from decisions. He said the council began to doubt itself and God, so it took the easy way out and that has only postponed the inevitable.
“We have to be willing to cross the border,” he said. “God is telling us there is no going back, but there is a great promise of a new thing as we move forward.”
Carroll said he hopes the council makes “informed God-blessed decisions, … I truly believe there is no going back. I look forward to this upcoming year – on embarking together on God’s vision.”