Mission Statements?
Are mission / vision statements a fad or an adoption from business and industry?
Or are they a helpful tool for communication / direction of ministry?
Does your church have a mission or vision statement and if so is it helpful?
Thanks for the input.
posted by Dan Masshardt at 8:28 PM
10 Comments:
Dan,
I think these kinds of statements can be helpful, but often are not. I think during the church growth movement of recent decades, so much emphasis was put on these kinds of statements that churches mistakenly thought that part of finding "success" depended on having good statements. Most of them just took Willow Creek's statements and changed two or three words so it wasn't a direct clone (that's what our church did). They also found that copying WC's statements didn't make them WC:-)
My conclusion now is this: Mission and Vision statements are only valuable if they actually emerge from inner convictions you are ready to die for. What happened to us was that after I realized all our previous statements were worthless, we quit having statements. Now, after going without them for about 8 years, we have things that burn within us, and we're thinking about writing some... maybe.
Dan M.,
Good questions. We have had a ton of different mission/vision statements (flavor of the month), and I don't know that any of them did us any good - maybe especially when we were using several different ones at the same time (well, not really, but sometimes it seemed like it. Not that our church is any kind of example to follow anyway).
I think it's good to have direction, but it seemed most statements were just something someone wanted to force on a bunch of people who really wanted nothing to do with it; and that doesn't really help anybody.
I was just reading this morning from 'Introducing the Missional Church', and they had these two comments:
"Very practically, a missional church is formed by the Spirit of God at work in the ordinary people of God in a local context. A practical implication is that this imagination changes the focus of leadership. Rather than having plans, programs, strategies, and goals, they ask how they can call forth what the Spirit is doing among the people..."
and
"The missional church begins where people are, not from some vision for where we would like them to be. Visioning and radical language about what the church should be are of little help; in fact, they create barriers to entering this journey of catching the winds of the Spirit."
What I understand them as saying is that we need to be more in tune with what God is presently doing among us, rather than trying to force something on a group of people (which seems to be what most vision and mission statements have been about). That's maybe what Fran is saying too, I just thought I'd throw that in there.
(preface: i'm probably repeating a lot of things you guys already know, so if that's the case, just take this as encouragement)
i tend to agree with fran and dan h. often, mission/vision statements are some lofty-sounding language that few people understand or get behind. i think it's important to know what the mission is, so that everyone's on the same page with what you're about. but often, that mission is said in so many ways, or has so many facets, that trying to put it into some catchy statement either shrinks it or misses it entirely. or a mission statement becomes obsolete and we've placed it so high that we can't revise or replace it.
i think the more important thing is to actually make sure that everyone's on board the real mission and not worrying about a cookie-cutter way to say it. even in writing this, i've almost typed out three different ways to define the mission, with various different emphases and nuances.
i say, focus on the reading and preaching of the Word, on getting people fired up about the Gospel, praying desperately that the Spirit would bless your work with fruit and new trees, so that you all are living for God on mission. then, like fran said, you might think about summarizing the mission.
the only thing that i would question is in the quotes from "introducing the missional church". maybe i'm taking them as too absolute, but i don't think that "plans, programs, strategies and goals" are necessarily bad. but as Jesus also brings us back to, this thing is about heart change, not just the externals. i don't think you'll get very far without some sort of goal or vision you're striving for or an idea of how you're going to get there, but we do have a tendency to get bogged down in pragmatics, which we have to fight against. does that make sense?
Dan,
I think that, in the CGGC, mission/statements are a fad. We have a fad culture that is so deeply entrenched that it is nearly impossible for any innovation to exist apart from the fad culture that created it and the fad culture that receives it.
In American Christianity, I think the statements are a manifestation of tendency to run the Body of Christ as if it was a business. I have a friend who's done well in business and who knows this stuff. He says that these phenomena can be traced to the works of Stephen Covey.
Faith, typical of most CGGC congregations, joined in the fad to the extent that it wrote a Mission Statement. We did it during the Purpose Driven Life/40 Days of Purpose Mega-Fad. It was, therefore, a rip off the the Saddleback material. It didn't reflect who we are and amounted to nothing.
As you might imagine, I have an APEST take on Mission and Vision Statements.
I believe that the move toward the writing of Mission/Vision Statements was a minor, short-lived apostolic reform movement. However, because the shepherd dominated leadership culture is relationship-focused, it could do nothing with the movement other than adopt it as a matter of form.
The result is that churches and Christian organization have the statements, they often have multiple statements but no one really knows what they are nor do they care and, because relationship values dominate and mission values don't, our churches have a 'form of righteousness' but no substance.
In my opinion, this all serves to illustrate how thoroughly we need to repent of our shepherd dominated leadership values.
I'm afraid that if we don't do that soon that it will be too late.
Gang,
Truths are toys that the shepherd dominated leadership culture plays with and then sets aside and forgets for the next toy placed on its lap.
I was reading my Church Advocate, the other day and read its Mission Statement and really noticed it for the first time:
"Earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints Jude 3b)."
The key word in the statement is the Greek word translated 'contend.' Both in Greek and in English that's strong language.
The Greek word, epagonizomai is a military term referring to an army's struggle for victory. If you look past the prefix 'ep' you'll see that the root of the word resembles our word 'agonize.' In fact, the Greek verb, agonizomai meaning 'to contend or struggle for with difficulties and dangers' is the root of the word.
The English word 'contend' is a strong word too. It's related to the word 'contentious.'
Those notions of military struggle, agonizing and being contentious about a cause all do justice to the meaning of what Jude was saying and to the original mission of the Church Advocate.
The first mission of the Church Advocate was prophetic. The direct object of the verb 'contend' in Jude 3 is 'the faith.' I believe that the CGGC needs a Church Advocate. It needs to be something to focus to a laser point its struggle for the victory of truth.
However, since to shepherds truths are toys to be fiddled with and soon abandoned, the Church Advocate continues to announce its original mission yet avoids its mission as if to fight for truth would bring a vomitous plague on the Body.
If you can find the last issue, look at it to its struggle for truth.
What you get is a chat with the Roths about church planting methods and techniques. No Scripture, of course. You get articles on recent programs--pay attention, there, MLI-ers--such as Engage and ACTS Teams, pictures on “Summertime in the CGGC,” notes about the resignation of an administrative assistant in the General Conference office and the hiring of a custodian [really. I couldn't dream that up as a joke!], an ad for the Gem Writing Contest, Cross-Cultural news, a note on who won CGWM scholarships and on the Study Buddy program, an article on meeting needs at Christmas and tech tips relaying what the FCC says about wireless mikes.
"Earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints Jude 3b)?"
Now, gang, I think Rachel Foreman is doing a fine job. My wife edited the Church Advocate. If she had tried to make it true to its mission--if she'd made it prophetic so that it was militaristic and contentious about the faith--she'd have been excoriated.
Therefore, I propose this Mission Statement for the Church Advocate:
Hoping against hope that we can all just get along (with apologies to Rodney King).
"Earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints Jude 3b)."
My take on this is something along the lines of Dan's quotes. I think a mission statement should come from the leadership's prayerful reflection on what God is doing in their local context that they are committed to being a part of. A mission statement is not the same as church's vision. A mission statement is indeed rooted in where the church is - with its gifts, passions, etc -- and the willingness to submit those to the leadership of the Holy Spirit in a focused way. In that sense, a mission statement may logically change as God helps a church more and more realize the fruit of the vision he has given us. - Steve Dunn
Bill,
Is your assertion that the Advocate adopted a mission statement to be trendy or that it strayed from the original mission?
It seems to me that the purpose of the Advocate is to keep us informed about what's going on around the denomination and to give some things to think about etc. I have no real problem with what it does. Isn't there another publication in the works that's more theological?
I believe Dan is right. The CHURCH ADVOCATE is really our church newsletter - and I very good one I might add. A document of teaching and theological dialogue would be of value but mixing the two, I believe, would dilute the purpose of either.
Dan,
I'm not positive but almost certain that the reference to Jude 3 as the mission of the Church Advocate goes back to Winebrenner. It is certainly nothing new--the fact that it is from the KJV attests to that.
Re: It seems to me that the purpose of the Advocate is to keep us informed about what's going on around the denomination and to give some things to think about etc.
No.
According to the Church Advocate itself its purpose is to be militaristic and to struggle for the victory of the truth.
I've read hundreds of issues of the magazine from the 1800s and early 1900s and there was a time that it matched its mission. There was a time that it was about truth. There was a time when its tone was more similar to what you'd expect to come from John the Baptist or Paul, not from Robert Schuller or Norman Vincent Peale.
It's like everything else in the CGGC. The Shepherd Mafia made the denomination an offer it couldn't refuse and the result is that the content of the magazine has been transformed. It no longer contends for truth. And, believe me when I say that it once did just that.
It has abandoned that lofty and crucial mission to be a source of light news of the denomination.
Do any of you really think that we need to devote the financial resources we are committing to the Advocate so that everyone can know about which administrative assistant in the office in Findlay has moved to Pennsylvania and that, we now have a new person emptying trash cans in the headquarters building?
Talk about institutionalism!
Gang! We have a mission to reach a corrupt world with the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord and everyone must repent and believe in Him.
Yeah, I know the Church Advocate is now a newsletter. I know it wasn't intended to be that and that it once wasn't that.
And, I know that we have numerous other newsletters. The ERC sends one out every week. And, Ed also sends one out weeks.
Let's get on task and figure out that we need to do more than provide customer service to the people in our congregations.
I got a post on the purpose of Mission Statements from David Plamondon in my email that's not showing here. Perhaps it will soon.
I hope so.
Good material David and good points.
MY point is what you have described PLUS a commentary on the difficulty that shepherd dominated leadership has in functioning according to principle because shepherds care only about relationship. Shepherds like truth. They believe in it. They commit to it theoretically. But, they can only play around with it because it doesn't touch their hearts. And, that's fine because it's not their role in the Body to be stewards of truth.
It's also not their role in the Body to set leadership values. Leadership values are to come from an integrated and collaborating APEST community.
What they have done to the Advocate, in spite of its crystal clear mission, is merely an example.
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