Measurable Values of a Disciple
I just returned from the Right Now Conference in Dallas, TX. As we have been talking about core values and mission statements, here is their mission statement and four measurables to define what success would look like.
Mission Statement -- Our Mission is to help people trade in the pursuit of the American Dream for a work that desperately needs Christ.
A Trader is a new kind of missionary, not defined by geography, but defined by a resolve to...
Choose Daily to sacrifice our time and money to apply The Parable of the Good Samaritan and to "go and do likewise."
Hate Injustice and find specific ways to bring the hope found in Jesus to desperate situations.
Work as Worship because God is glorified when we use our God-given passions and skills with excellence.
Act Swiftly because the time is Right Now!
I sat in on a breakout led by Will Mancini (www.willmancini.com, www.churchunique.com. He is a clarity evangelist and wants us to all have precise clarity about why our individual church exists. He helped Right Now develop these statements. He lays it all out in Church Unique.
Here's my question for discussion: Do you agree that an individual church should have a unique existence and calling? Why don't many churches have such clarity?
Labels: books, conference, core values, discipleship, leadership, mission
posted by Brian at 8:13 PM
14 Comments:
Brian, I have been reading Will Mancini for about a year now and have found his work to be exceptionally helpful. I absolutely believe that each church should have a unique calling and existence. That is why the cookie-cutter programmatic approach to ministry so often fails to bear fruit. Each church has a unique context and a unique group of disciples, which I believe the Holy Spirit brings together in a local setting to be the best church FOR a particular community. Churches lack this clarity in part because they want to be like another church or see themselves in competition with other churches and therefore shape themselves with this motivation instead of seeking the mind of Christ and the leadership of the Spirit for their unique calling... More on this later. Need to go back to bed so I can preach to my unique group of Jesus'disciples in a few hours. - steve dunn
I'm still struggling with this. I'm reading Mancini's book (it's on the back burner) and it's better than I thought it would be.
I think that our ministry needs to be contextualized in several ways. I think that we need to think very deeply about what we do and don't do and why.
It's the need to come up with pithy mission statements that seems sometimes like a false priority.
My fear is that I don't want to be reductionist. I want to make disciples and teach them to obey everything Jesus has commanded us.
So my official position is...I don't know.
Great questions and dialogue. I wanted to chime with two thoughts.
First the Right Now stuff is best understood in light of the entire vision frame which I posted on my blog. To only see part might reinforce the wrong notions about the nature of clarity, positioning it only as pithy statement and slick talk.
Second, on the reductionist comment, I think that is a good concern. In thinking about clarity it is import to distinguish between simple and simplistic. One is profound and the other is cheap. There is a big difference between a slogan and a proverb. It is also important to grab the importance of accurate synthesis. For example Jesus boiled down 613 commands into love God and others. The 10 Commandments are another example.
Thanks again for referencing the book.
Thanks for the comments Will. As I sat in Will's breakout, I thought, "This is great stuff, but takes a real skill to make powerfully simple rather than simplistic or overly complicated."
We are starting a vision process next week, and I hope we can discern something powerfully simple.
Thanks too for chiming in Will. I watched some of your blog videos and then bought the book (kindle). I appreciate the breadth of the background you cover and the depth of the book. So far, it has exceeded my expectations and I expected it to be good.
I think that the biggest problem with articulating mission and vision is trying to come up with something clever rather than doing a lot of hard work and taking time (something that Will talks a lot about in the book).
I still have to wonder what the first century church would have thought about having a unique vision in whatever city they found themselves.
To some extent, these thing are products of our times. It may well be that they are necessary in the increasing complexity in which we now live for effective ministry.
Wow! I, for one, am honored that Will has contributed to our conversation.
Re Brian's:
Here's my question for discussion: Do you agree that an individual church should have a unique existence and calling? Why don't many churches have such clarity?
Not to beat a horse beyond its death, but there are some foundational concepts that we leave undefined. Meaningful conversation, therefore, becomes very difficult if not impossible.
My guess, Brian, is that you are using a very American and Christendomized definition of church so that Faith Community, with which I am intimately involved, is an individual church and the Crossover is a church and College First is a church and so on.
I simply still don't know what to do with that way of thinking.
Should Faith have a unique statement of mission and the Crossover also have her's? Does the Lord understand our existence in the way we demand of Him? I don't know.
One reason I think the American church is so focusless is that we use words that have biblical meaning but define them in ways so disconnected from their Bible meaning that they have no use to us. We tell the Head of the Body how His body is going to be constructed and expect Him to follow OUR paradigm. I'm not sure He does that.
I am honestly sorry to muddle the question.
How exciting! If this conversation becomes "Peyton Manning's right arm" we may finally begin to move toward kingdom.
I have one preliminary comment that explains my own confusion about the role I should play in this discussion.
I believe that:
Shepherds are the primary stewards of relationship in the Body.
Evangelists are the primary stewards of the task of bringing new members into the Body.
Teachers are the primary stewards of the extent to which members of the Body understand what it means to be in the Body.
Prophets are the primary stewards of the ongoing call for repentance in the Body. And that
Apostles are the primary stewards of task of making disciples.
I think that there is a necessary interaction between prophets and apostles in understanding the meaning of discipleship. But, I also believe that it is the role of the apostle to lead in the making of disciples.
Therefore, I am very cautious about the role I take for myself in this extremely important conversation.
Bill,
I admit to not thinking about the Oneness of church. But even with your definition of church, the purpose of a local church can depend greatly on the "local predicament" to use Will's vocabulary.
The expression of our church may take a different form because of where our part of the body may be diverse from other parts.
So I can see Faith having a different mission/vision from Crossover though I could see the Core Values being the same. I still think the CGGC should focus on solid core values.
Brian,
So I can see Faith having a different mission/vision from Crossover though I could see the Core Values being the same. I still think the CGGC should focus on solid core values.
As much as I can, I agree.
This is precisely where My calling to be a prophet and today's church's demands on the clergy person put me and the congregation I serve at a gross disadvantage. Faith has a very universal, big-picture understanding of its mission: one that, I believe, could and should be true of every group of people who come together in the Name of the Lord. It is:
Love God, love your neighbor and love one another.
Until an apostle or apostles come along, that's the best we will do with a prophet in the (GMWAS) clergyman's role.
This is why I say that I'm unsure what to say in this thread. I believe that apostles are the primary stewards of mission in the Body. Come to me and ask me what repentance is, what we must repent of and how we must repent and it's like opening up a faucet. But, I got nuthin on mission and discipleship other than the yearning for 'A'-pest balance and the broadest of broad universal principles.
My tendency now is to agree with bill on the similarity of mission articulation across various churches. What we need to be is clear and focused. In that regard, we are much in need of a 'clarity evangelist' I think.
Whatever I am, I am never satisfied with where I and others in the church our at. It causes me great unease, even thinking about people who are very committed and mature. I am messed up.
When I think of mission, "Come and die" sounds like an attractive one to me.
"As the Father has sent me, so I send you." "As you are going, make disciples of all nations."
Bill talks a lot about the church gathered, which is extremely important and I'm concerned with too, but I think about the church scattered a lot too. If I had to choose, what the church does when we go from our worship gathering back into the world is what I think most about.
Yet I have enough shepherd to keep me from going crazy and getting kicked out. :-) And God's been gracious in allowing me to serve with a seasoned shepherd.
Good discussion.
Bill-- both Acts and the epistles are replete with references to the local churches as "the church", so I think that's a biblical way of talking, as long as we all get the relationship between big C and little c.
I think most of this conversation is what we have been calling contextualization, God shaping the church to the "local predicament". But in truth, most of the church is not contextualized, because most of the churches are copies of what someone told them or showed them the church should be.
I would suggest that all churches should share some common things when it comes to the mission, but that their own expression of both the gospel and the church should be marked with a clarity that A) Can only come from a knowledge of the local context, and B) Can be grasped by the typical disciple-in-process in that church.
Fran,
I gladly and humbly defer to your apostolic wisdom regarding how to disciple people. Your ministry has produced fruit in discipling.
Re: Bill-- both Acts and the epistles are replete with references to the local churches as "the church", so I think that's a biblical way of talking, as long as we all get the relationship between big C and little c.
What I think is that what we call the 'local church' in the New Testament was really a network of small gatherings of believers. The 'church' (singular) in Ephesus was not one congregation in the way we think of all the people who meet in your building as a local church and the, say, the Baptist congregation that meets on the next block as another local church.
In speaking to the Ephesian elders, Paul acknowledged this reality. He said, "You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house."
I think that the local church that Jesus sees in Plainfield, IL is not LifeSpring Community Church of God. It is the whole community of Jesus followers there. Lifespring would then be a part of the local church.
I know that many people are annoyed and offended by my critique of the new We Believe in part because of its sectarianism. But, to me, this is a big point. I'm certain that we need to be aware of our local predicament. I'm concerned that until we think of the church in way Jesus thinks of the church we will never be intimately connected with His notion of her mission in any time or place.
Bill,
I agree with your critique of sectarianism. I just think that when we try to talk about what God "sees" when he looks at the church in a particular locale, we split hairs... He sees each gathering and the whole church of Jesus in that place. Why do we have to insist it's one or the other?
Fran,
He sees each gathering and the whole church of Jesus in that place.
Wow, that is seriously deep.
While, I know I'm probably taking Brian's initial idea up a bunny trail and I'm not sure this is the time and place for this discussion, I'm not sure what to think about this. I would never deign to suggest that I know how Christ 'sees' His Body. But, it does make sense to me that the many fractures and separations in His Body does matter to Him.
Perhaps another time and another place.
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