Visioneering: God’s Blueprint for Developing and Maintaining Personal Vision
Andy Stanley
About the Book:
Everybody ends up somewhere in life.
Wouldn’t you like to end up somewhere on purpose?
What breaks your heart?
What keeps you up at night?
What could be that should be?
Andy Stanley believes these questions are bread crumbs that lead to the discovery of personal vision. With down-to-earth practicality, Andy extracts principles from the story of Nehemiah to help you discover your purpose in life.
Visioneering includes helpful exercises and time-tested ideas for visionary decision-making, personal growth, and leadership at home and at work. Catch a glimpse of God’s incredible vision for your life, relationships, and business—and discover the passion to follow it.
Includes discussion guide for use in small groups
About the Author:
Communicator, author, and pastor ANDY STANLEY founded Atlanta-based North Point Ministries in 1995. Today, NPM consists of six churches in the Atlanta area and a network of 30 churches around the globe that collectively serve nearly 70,000 people weekly. A survey of U.S. pastors in Outreach Magazine identified Andy Stanley as one of the top ten most influential living pastors in America.
Andy holds an undergraduate degree in journalism from Georgia State University and a master’s degree from Dallas Theological Seminary. He is the author of more than 20 books, including The New Rules for Love, Sex & Dating; Ask It; How to Be Rich; Deep & Wide; Enemies of the Heart; When Work & Family Collide; Visioneering; and Next Generation Leader.
In the digital world, his success reaches well beyond the local Atlanta area. Nearly 1.5 million of Andy’s messages, leadership videos, and podcasts are accessed from North Point’s website monthly.
In 2012, Your Move with Andy Stanley premiered on NBC after Saturday Night Live, giving him an even wider audience with which to share his culturally relevant, practical insights for life and leadership. Currently, over five million episodes are consumed each month through television and podcasts, underscoring Stanley’s impact not only as a communicator but also as an influencer of culture.
Nothing is as personal as his passion for engaging with live audiences, which he has pursued for over two decades at leadership events around the world. In high demand, he speaks to nearly 200,000 people at various annual events before audiences of both church and organizational leaders, including conferences such as Catalyst, Leadercast, Exchange, and the WCA Global Leadership Summit.
“I cannot fill their cups,” he often says of the opportunity to impact leaders in business and in ministry, “but I have a responsibility to empty mine.”
Andy and his wife, Sandra, have three grown children and live near Atlanta.
My Review:
Andy Stanley is a well known author, pastor, and speaker. I absolutely love reading his books and gaining insight on leadership and living a life devoted to Christ. Visioneering is a great book and I absolutely love this revised edition. We all end up somewhere in life, it may be where we planned to be or it may not be where we wanted to be, but we have to know its where God wants us to be. In this groundbreaking book, Andy takes principles from the story of Nehemiah to help us discover the purpose of our lives. Asking three questions: What breaks your heart? What keeps you up at night? and What could be that should be? Andy believes these are the bread crumbs that will lead us to the discovery of personal vision. Using exercises, and ideas, we can catch a glimpse of God’s incredible vision for our lives including our relationships (business and personal) and we can discover the passion to follow through.
I really enjoyed reading Visioneering and know that you will benefit from it also.
I received a copy of this book for free. No review was required. I gave this review on my own free will.
A Greater Yes 
Konnor May
Professor Huff
Writing 110
10 February 2019
Purpose is in your Vision
Dear Andy Stanley
Through our day-to-day lives, we face many decisions. Some are easy such as what should I wear? or what should I eat for breakfast? while others appear a lot more complicated. These decisions may be am I willing to follow to sacrifice myself for Christ? Through the decisions we make, our vision begins to be sculpted from this behavior. In your book Visioneering, you discuss the importance of finding a vision to find a purpose for your life. Through my perspective, the idea of taking responsibility for my own life appealed to me the most.
You believe, “[E]verybody ends up somewhere in life. A few people end up somewhere on purpose” (8). Thus, through your writing you express the need of a thoroughly tested and thought-out vision: a vision where we can look back on where we came from and where Christ is satisfied with the way we handled our lives. You also describe how these visions we desire will cause us to struggle and may cause us to make a decision, leading us to sacrifice the pleasures that life teases us with. These risks or sacrifices we face are inevitable, and we must own up to them and take responsibility. As you say, “[D]on’t expect others to make a greater sacrifice than yourself” (132).
How true I found this simple statement in my life. There is never an easy way out, so why would someone else take the toll on my behalf? My goal or my vision ever since I was a child was to become a professional soccer player and use this exposed position in my life to evangelize. God called me to spread his word and this is how I thought he was desiring for me to express his teaching. I honestly felt this was God’s purpose for me and I would let no one stop me. So why would I expect someone to give me an easy path to this goal? What I came to learn was that through the constant diligences of starting school straight to school activities then to soccer and thus at 10 pm I would start my home life, such as chores, homework or just the necessity of family relations. These life experiences, where I made the greater sacrifices for those around me or took the heavier loads, developed me as a man.
I am a Montanan, and people give us the reputation of being stubborn and tough. Such as being country boys or ranchers which is not true in all cases. The mindset of the people is, if you fall, you better be picking yourself up by your bootstraps and getting right back into that fight. This identity I am given, I have also come to appreciate. The reason for this appreciation is I find myself constantly making the decision to choose a path worth fighting for. As I would play soccer and devote near all my energy into this vision, I had of being a professional soccer player, I had to say no to activities, parties or even just a day of rest. I would grab the issues by the horns and fight my way until I am on top. This is also what I believe Stanley is trying to express when he describes how visions become painful and may appear hopeless, but ultimately it is what leads to God. Stanley describes how my vision is to bring me purpose. I found myself questioning my own vision, second guessing myself of whether this is my purpose and if so, what is my responsibility. As I searched my future through prayer, I became aware of my lack of devotion to my faith in Christ. Stanley declares how I should keep my morals before my vision and what I saw was soccer had taken control and I simply was not contributing to the growth of my faith. This led me to a place of being purposeless. The whole time I was so focused on my role as a soccer player and making it to the next level, I was being irresponsible to my main purpose of the vision which was to evangelize. I was merely going through the motions of Christianity.
Maybe this Montanan mentality is not fully correct! I needed to fight, but I need to know what I am fighting for. Yes, soccer is a deep passion, but it was a path to become an evangelist. The true purpose has always been to evangelize.
Furthermore, Visioneering comes upon the topic of “walking before you talk” (75). The book really digs into what I was not doing. I had only been fulfilling half of the vision. This topic of walking before you talk is a pretty cliché Christian term. Ever since I was a child, I have heard my father say, “Don’t rely on your words, instead go out there and prove to them who you really are.” I constantly found myself acting and saying I was a Christian but, simply had no faith. As I would go through most of high school with this acting mentality the people of the church would look at me an example of a child of God. I knew the words to say and how to act in a very appropriate and respectful manner. Thus, my father would say prove yourself. I simply could not prove my Christianity, there was no sincerity in my actions and no proof of growth towards Christ. I was forced to face the facts. I was not his son, thus I picked up my cross and accepted Christ. I was beginning to rewrite my vision.
Right before the collegiate years of soccer began, I found myself making a decision which would make or break my vision I had carried ever since I was a child. As the temptations of college such as sex, drugs and the desire to be someone where infringing on my morals I was in a state of loss. Thus, a choice was to be made. Is this vision of soccer one I must uphold or are my morals of more importance? And just as you express, “abandon the vision before your morals” (185). With great pain I faced the soccer coach of Point Loma Nazarene University and discussed my decision to abandon my childhood goal in order to refocus my mind, and not fall into the slippery slope which all people fight of following Christ or living for ourselves. The fantasy was behind me and began fighting a fight worth my life. Instead of soccer taking my time I committed myself fully to Christ and his Kingdom.
And now here I stand before my pears, the same way I stood before I was baptized and express my new-found vision: [a vision refined by the writings of Andy Stanley and found with great purpose to my life.] As I step forth this day, my purpose and my responsibility are to become educated in a way where I may earn a degree, allowing me to practice Chiropractic or Physical Therapy for the purpose of owning a business in which through growth will allow me to become a missionary in Nicaragua. And as any vision should, according Andy Stanley, end in Christ. However, the vision does not end here. As a son of Christ my whole life resides in the hands of God and by any means he is subject to change my life. I am not called to an easy life, but I am called to manage my life in a way that I am honoring my God and living with a purpose in my day to day. This is how I will end up at my “somewhere” on purpose.
Work Cited
Stanley, Andy. Visioneering. Multnomah. 1999.
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