The picture on the box.

The start of classes last week was also the starting pistol for my one-on-one meetings with key student leaders.  And as I've been meeting with leader after leader, I find myself having similar conversations around a very important thing I learned to develop as an InterVarsity student...the big picture of vision.

I used to consider myself an extremely detail-oriented, present-minded person.  I remember freshman year I couldn't really plan beyond two weeks ahead of time, and two weeks was really pushing it.  I got annoyed with the way announcement emails I received were formatted to squeeze important details for six events going on that week into one fat, plain-texted paragraph.  I knew if we were going to have a potluck, we needed to figure out how many people were coming in order to bring enough utensils, plates, napkins and cups and if it looked like most people were bringing starchy food and meats, I would provide some vegetables or desserts for a little variety.  On spreadsheets, charts, and word documents, well, I was the one who wanted consistencies in capitalization, indentation and punctuation.  Believe me, it wasn't just because I was an English major.

To some extent, I'm still like this today.  In some ways I've changed, and at the same time, some things haven't really changed.  But when I became a student leader in InterVarsity, the concept of vision and question of "where are we going?" really stretched and over time shook everything I knew about my detail-oriented, present-minded leadership.

"What do you mean, 'where do you want the fellowship to be in two years'?  How can we think about two years from now when we barely have it together for next week?"

That's what I used to ask myself incredulously when my staff worker challenged me and/or my E-board team to think beyond "here."  This big, fat, abstract, fuzzy picture of "there" was nowhere near my radar.  But over time, my way of thinking has shifted.  I've made connections of how lacking a clear vision can cost your leadership and the growth and change you want to see happen.  Or how without it, this "vision" can become a delusion or the groundwork for cynical and jaded leaders and followers.

Among InterVarsity staff in the NY/NJ Region, I've heard the analogy of "big picture" being the "forest" and "details" as the "leaf" on a tree in the forest.  But while I think it's a helpful picture of identifying those who tend to see things in bigger, more abstract ideas and those who see the smaller details, I think it's lacking the depiction of how the big picture and the small details relate to each other and how both are necessary in leadership.

Last year I was listening to a Tim Keller sermon (which had nothing to do with leadership, vision, or anything of the sorts) while I went running one morning, and he used an analogy that I love applying to this concept of "big picture" to "details":

Let's say you just bought a new house appliance that you need to assemble.  Well, let's use an Ikea dresser as an example (I heard those can be quite complex).  It comes with all the nuts, bolts, and parts in a giant box that are necessary in putting it together.  All of it is necessary, including the box.  The goal is to have a completed and functional dresser.  If you only had the pieces and didn't have the picture on the box, there'd be a good possibility that you'd get frustrated with putting it together and quickly lose sight and motivation of what you wanted to make in the first place.  And obviously, if you didn't have the pieces and only had the box, you would simply have an empty box good for uses other than to make the beautiful dresser pictured on it.  In order to build your Ikea dresser, you need to have the picture on the box ready for you to refer back to when you get stuck focusing on the pieces, and sometimes, you'll be able to figure out where a piece goes better by looking at the picture as opposed to the thorough but unclear typed instructions in the manual.

That's the relationship between vision and details/next steps.  We need to develop the big picture of our vision before we can set off on our day-by-day, week-by-week decisions and evaluations.  It doesn't mean we don't care about details.  I still deeply believe that the small things make a big difference...that they matter.  But understanding what the vision is helps make sense of the details and next steps and what you're actually working towards in the long run, not just today.