If you’re familiar with 3DM ‘lingo,’ you know that we often talk about Pioneers and Developers.

Pioneers are people who love charging into new things and taking new territory for the Kingdom. They start things. Innovate things. And soon…they are off to the next new thing. Developers, on the other hand, are incredibly gifted on cultivating and settling ground that has been won. They make the land inhabitable and sustainable.

Without Pioneers, you never get new territory. Without Developers, you never keep the new territory. You need both to work together and you need them to have a healthy respect for what the other brings to the table.

As a PIONEER myself, I’ve been reflecting lately on two key mistakes Pioneers can make.

ONE. They can assume that every idea they have is an idea worth going after.

Put another way, thinking every good idea is a God idea. You can probably see where this can get a Pioneer into trouble. Like an ADHD teenager skipping their Ritalin, they can jump from one thought to another, or worse, jump from starting one project, never finishing before jumping into the next because they had a new ‘great idea.’

And so in the end, they never win ground, they just jump around, never disciplining themselves to (1) Take the time to listen to God between good ideas and ideas he’s putting in them, and (2) Finishing what they started even if it’s lost the luster of being new and exciting.

Most of us who have met Pioneers have met this immature version: They can cast vision, they can get a group excited, but eventually, nothing really ever comes into fruition. And eventually, people stop following them. You never win ground, you’re always confused about what the next thing is you’re going after and perpetually exhausted.

TWO. Being slavishly devoted to a very specific picture or vision of the future rather than what that future represents.

Think about it this way: When a Pioneer gets a fresh vision, it’s a bit like getting into a high watch tower, looking far off into horizon and seeing a giant rectangle that’s two miles away. If they aren’t careful, they’ll think that the thing they are building is a giant rectangle structure.

The problem is that when you take the journey of those two miles and get closer to the structure, you actually see it isn’t a rectangle, but a giant cylinder water tower…it’s just that from two miles away it looks like it’s a rectangle.

This metaphor is a close picture of a mistake Pioneers make in being slavishly devoted to the specifics of a vision they’ve had rather than holding the vision loosely in their hands and being more committed to what that vision represents. Where does that vision take you?

In other words…don’t confuse the Vision with the Vehicle.

Here’s a practical example: The vision is the disciples who can make disciples who can make disciples. And yes, there are all sorts of principles and ideas that inform the vehicle that we construct to deliver that Vision. But we need to be far more committed to that Vision than the specific Vehicle itself. Because every church, leader and mission context is different, each Vehicle should reflect those differences.

If God has given you a vision, fantastic. It’s as if you can taste it, see it, feel it. But don’t mistake that visceral experience for the exact thing you’re building.