Transformative Visioning

Gather the wisdom, weave a dream

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"The purpose of Transformative Visioning is to gather the wisdom and weave a dream powerful enough to awaken a community’s soul, and inspirational enough to unleash its passion, both of which are needed to make real the vision claimed. Transformative Visioning is the dynamic element within the Journey of Transformation that invites your community to create, articulate and activate a prophetic vision for the future. What gives it its transformative potential, however, is not some grand vision you might create at the end of it all. Rather, it is what happens to you while you are creating it that makes all the difference. Its power is not in a future that awaits you, but in the sort of people you are becoming and the very purpose for your existence.

 

Of the five dynamics elements, Transformative Visioning is the one that drives the overall Journey of Transformation through its focus on visioning. It provides the overarching movement and the linchpin into which the other four dynamic elements are woven and given expression. Transformative Visioning engages leaders and members in visioning and planning, along with the deeper work of transformation.

 

Transformative Visioning includes conventional planning methods with which you are familiar and need to use in order to plan the operational changes pertaining to your land, buildings, healthcare and the like. It incorporates the conventional approaches along with new processes that invite depth, integration and partnership. It includes these conventional methods but takes things to another level in order to bring forth deep change. The intent of creating a new vision is not simply to make surface changes that extend your years of survival. Rather, it is more for crafting a vision based upon your deepest longings with the hope of bringing forth new life. In this sense, Transformative Visioning is not merely operational but aspirational.

 

Transformative Visioning is a process for creating a shared vision of the future that is distinct from the past. It transcends and includes the past but is focused squarely on the future. It is not about forecasting the future or eliminating risk. It is not about creating new vision statements to hang on the wall or strategic plans for three-ring binders. It is about opening up a variety of possible futures and taking substantial risks to bring forth new life. It invites members to dialogue in new ways, participate in new forums, and gather with new partners.

 

Transformative Visioning is a journey that will test your readiness to live authentically out of your deepest beliefs and leave behind all that has become bereft of meaning, or is made more of nostalgia than your call to further the reign of God. It is a journey that seeks to transform the very soul of community through holy and intimate conversations, loving and reconciling exchanges, and communal discernment of God’s call. It is less about strategic plans than who you are growing to become and the very purpose you claim for your existence.

 

In this Chapter I will discuss the keys to Transformative Visioning, namely the kinds of processes, content and structures that bring Transformative Visioning to life. I will also discuss the tensions between conventional planning methods and Transformative Visioning as a source of generativity."

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An excerpt from Dr. Ted Dunn's, Graced Crossroad: Pathways to deep change and transformation.