Will Mancini moved from the trenches of church leadership and founded Auxano, a church consulting group that takes a unique approach of helping churches find their vision frame before proceeding with typical consulting services. To that end, Will calls himself a "clarity evangelist."

Will spoke about how a church can discern its unique calling at the 2009 Cornerstone Knowledge Network conference in Charlotte. Here's what he had to say:

For the last ten years, I've been helping churches work through how to discern their unique call. My desire is to push each church to greater clarity, to find a pathway to vision.

Clarifying vision is the first step in achieving ministry alignment. God is doing something cosmically significant and locally specific in your church. Uniqueness permeates God's plan. The starting point to unlocking God's plan is leaning more deeply into God's uniqueness for your church. Every sunset is unique; every snowflake is unique. Our God is so infinitely creative he doesn't even mass produce snowflakes! A meaningless water crystal, and God takes the time to hand craft each one.

Steps to clarity
1. Rethink uniqueness. Retool how we approach discerning our vision.
2. Uncover uniqueness. Discovery work that needs to be done.
3. Talk up our uniqueness. We need a new model for casting vision.
4. Live it. Create new ways to live our your call.

Obstacles to discovering your church's uniqueness: Thinkholes
What keeps churches from moving through this process of defining their uniqueness? There are six "thinkholes" that get in our way to finding our uniqueness.Like a sinkhole, thinkholes suck you in. When it comes to having a unique vision, there's a lot of quicksand on the landscape. You're never going to unleash a compelling story if you're stuck in one of these thinkholes.

See blog post titled "Thinkholes" to find out six obstacles that can get in the way of discerning vision.

Uncover uniqueness
After considering thinkholes and how they may be hindering your church's ability to discern your unique call, the next step is to uncover uniqueness. Ask yourself, What can your church do better than 10,000 others? This is not to foster competition; it's to clarify what you're best at. The answer to this question can also be uncovered by filling in the blank to this statement: Our church exists to glorify God and make disciples by _____________________.

If you have trouble answering this question, you're not alone. Most churches say their mission is to glorify God and make disciples. While this is a high calling, it's not unique. Keep pushing until you can clearly define what makes you unique. Once you're crystal clear on what your unique vision is, you'll know what your great permission is within the Great Commission. Just as Jesus didn't attempt to solve every need during his earthly ministry, you'll know what you can say no to, and what should be a core activity of your church.

How do you discover your church's Kingdom concept? Grab your church leadership team and work through these questions:

1. What's your local predicament (or context)? Is your church next to a school, an art museum? Where has God placed your church? Your physical location may be one key to discovering your uniqueness.
2. What's your collective potential? As you help individuals in your church unlock their spiritual gifts, what patterns of spiritual gifting does your church posses? This helps your church discern your "sweet spot," the place where natural gifting converges with God's call.
3. What's your apostolic esprit, or leadership passion? Apostolic esprit asks, "What gives you your unique style?" What puts bounce in your step?

Examples of how some churches answer this question: We glorify God and make disciples by ___________

"leaving the light on"
"highlighting God’s grace in a world that does everything to suppress it."
"being a catalyst for bringing unity to the community of Christ."
"Being a center for art and ideas from a Christian perspective."

Main ideas
Don't let thinkholes make you stuck, and think about Kingdom concepts—have robust conversations until you figure it out.

Once you've got your Kingdom concept, you need to create a model to talk it up. These five questions will help you create your "vision frame":

What are we doing?
Why are we doing it? (what are your values, what gives meaning to your culture?)
How are we doing it? (what's our strategy for accomplishing our mission?)
When are we successful?
Where is God taking us?

Once you answer these questions, you have an amazing opportunity to live out your vision. "Vision Deck," a set of cards with 52 exercises to help churches celebrate and have continual conversations about what God's doing in their church so the unique vision is lived out and not lost. Quoting a friend, "You were born an original; don't die a carbon copy."

Will Mancini is the author of Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create Movement

You can learn more at ChurchUnique.com.