Bonhoffer does an excellent job of focusing our eyes on reality in his great book, Life Together. One of his main points in the first section is how deadly the visionary is to the life of the saints. By visionary, I might more accurately say the idealist. This person is always trying to reach some goal of perfection. They have an ideal or a vision of what the church, or their local body of believers, ought to look like, and they love that vision.
The problem with this, as Bonhoffer points out, is that the vision is an ideal in your head, or might we say an idol in your head? The people that you are called to love are not the perfect ones in your imagination. They are the flawed, broken and needy ones in your church.
Of course, we should make plans, disciple, do the work of an evangelist. The Lord calls us to these things. But the 'vision' we are working towards is quite simple really. We want to be a church full of people who love Jesus, worship Him in spirit and in truth, confess our sins to God and one another, freely give and receive forgiveness, are transformed into the image of the Son by Word and Sacrament, and then attempt by God's grace, to do it all again as we raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, trusting God to grant us the promise of our children and their children, forever.
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