Your Future Shapes Your Present

I'm not a new year's resolution guy myself - never have been.  But I do believe in vision and having some defined goals that push you to do things you wouldn't naturally do otherwise.  Alan Hirsch, author of the Forgotten Ways, just posted this thought that deserves some thoughtful consideration.

Fritz Roethlisberger, the late professor at Harvard Business School and a pioneer in the field of organizational behavior, observed: “Most people think of the future as the ends and the present as the means, whereas in fact, the present is the ends and the future the means.” Translated, Roethlisberger is telling us that holding a definite sense of vision (a preferred future) and mission informs and alters how people think and how they will behave in the present. Viewed this way, the future is a means to alter behavior. The new behavior shapes the ends, which in turn alter the future, and the spiral continues.

One does not creep up on a big future. Rather, the future is boldly declared in a vision and serves as the catalyst for all that follows. “When President Kennedy announced his famous moonwalk vision, there were no solutions to the problems that lay ahead: Congressional approval, appropriation of funds, technological breakthroughs, and the rejuvenation of NASA were still needed to fulfill the vision.” Kennedy’s moonwalk vision, acting as a catalyst, gathered up a collection of emotions and aspirations, desire and excitement, curiosity, power, a quest for knowledge, a competitive wish to be the first country to walk on the moon, imperialistic lust, and focused all these disparate forces to trigger unified action. The same is true for Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I have a dream’ speech. It acted as a strange attractor to provoke and initiate action on behalf of that vision.

We look back on such events as inevitable…things which just seemed to happen. But it is not so at all. We seem to lose perspective on the missional communitas that visions like these evoke. The authors of Surfing the Edge of Chaos profoundly note that “…enactment on behalf of a powerful goal alters the structure of reality” We, the people of God, are carried forward by a vision of the future that constitutes our mission. When we are caught up into it, and pursue it, we are changed, and we go on to enact history.

So, what is your vision for 2009 and beyond?