In the Coracle

Strategic Planning for Missional Churches :: Core Purpose

PatFebruary 3, 2006

This is part of the Strategic Planning for Missional Churches series. You can find the whole series by viewing this tag.

As I write this entry from a Starbucks in Issaquah, waiting for my wife to pick me up for a date, Super Bowl fever abounds in the city of rain and caffeine. This particular Starbucks has offered, much to my surprise, a free tall drink to anybody wearing Seahawks clothing (I happen to be wearing a Ricky Waters jersey, my only sports jersey, and I am thrilled to save $2.89 on a tall soy chai latte.

The two weeks leading up to Super Bowl are overwhelming for fans of a team like the Seahawks. Picked to lose the game by 99.2% of the national media, theories abound as to why this might happen, and are as varied and colorful as the pimples on the back of your average Steelers fan (hi, Oyler).

One theory is particularly interesting, and it surfaces every year, always as a description of the losing team. “They were just happy to be there, and felt that they had accomplished what they wanted to just by making it to the game.” Of course, it’s all manure created by lazy sportswriters, but there exists an old wives’ tale that one team in a big game like this actually wants to win, and the other checks out as soon as somebody sings a national anthem. The teams’ purposes on that day are different, or so the story goes.

(How’s that for an elaborate introduction to the process of contextualizing the strategic planning process for businesses into the missional church? :-) You should see what I can do if I get a couple of beers in me)

In the corporate environment, the organization has fundamental reasons for existence beyond simply making money. Of course, we as employees work for an income, but we get to choose where we do that. That choice often depends on a corporation’s sense of purpose. Core purpose defines the “why?” of the strategic plan. A corporate purpose is that thing in yoru gut that says, “this is why we’re here. And if we’re not doing this, then I’m outta here.”

Purpose informs strategy and planning - and in fact, purpose often can masquerade as specific goals or strategies. But core purpose goes much, much deeper, and is more idealistic and thrilling.

Here are a few core purposes in the corporate world:
Mary Kay Cosmetics: To give unlimited opportunity for women
Merck: To preserve and improve human life
Nike: To experience the emotion of competition
Wal-Mart: To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people
Disney: To make people happy

Some of these are clearly articulated by the company (e.g. Merck), and some are not (e.g. Nike), though those which are not articulated are still quite easy for anybody to see. If you can’t figure out that Nike is all about competition, well, you either know nothing about Nike or competition.

Implementation of Core Purpose can and will lead a company into a variety of fields, but the purpose never changes. Imagine Disney if it had described its core purpose as making animated short films, a market that they created, dominated and then moved far beyond. With such a limited core purpose, they would nto have been able to evolve.

Arriving at Your Core Purpose
Here’s a simple and profound exercise to discover your core purpose. Ask and answer the question of “why do we do what we do?” Then continue to ask “why” - at least five times - until the answer doesn’t change.

Imagine this interaction, and put yourself into the shoes (ha!) of a Nike executive:

Q: What do we do?
a: We make sporting goods
Q: Why?
A: Because athletic people need athletic equipment
Q: Why do they need equipment?
A: Because it helps them to compete
Q: Why do we want to help them compete?
A: Because there is a thrill in competitive events
Q: Why do we care?
A: We want to equip people to experience the emotion of competition

(or something like that…) but I hope you can see how Why distills the purpose

Core Purpose in a Missional Church

“The purpose of missional communities is to be a source of radical hope, to witness to the new identity and vision, the new way of life that has become a social reality in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. As an alternative social reality, the church is called to teach people how to talk, how to act, how to fight, how to love, how to see the world in a peculiar way – a Christlike way. As a sign, foretaste, agent and instrument of God’s reconciling love and forgiveness, the church makes Jesus Christ visible in the world. The church is a social reality that continually engages in the practices that cultivate a people of truth, peace, wholeness and holiness.”
- Inagrace Dietrich (ed. by Guder), Missional Church pg. 152-153

Our Core Purpose early in the Mt. Si Vineyard life was this:

To be a growing community of passionately authentic disciples of Jesus who transform the world through relationships with God and with each other.

(Actually, there was much debate about whether this was a purpose (mission) or vision statemetn.

Last spring we modified it to this:

Purpose (Mission) Statement: Mt. Si Vineyard is a Christian community who follows Jesus by facing upward in worship; inward in discipleship; and outward in mission.
· UP: Worship, adoration, prayer
· IN: Discipleship and spiritual formation in community
· OUT: Mission, evangelism, service

We partner in the mission of God in today’s world, which is to relentlessly pursue all of creation to redeem and restore it back to loving relationship with God and the entire created world.

We realized in last Saturday’s leadership retreat that the first part was practical, but the last part starts to get at reality.

So we currently decribe our mission (our core purpose) this way:

Our mission is to continue the ministry of Jesus in our time and place. Our desire is to be equipped and sent to do what we see God doing in our world, every day. We partner in the mission of God in today’s world, which is to relentlessly pursue all of creation to redeem and restore it back to loving relationship with God.

This is cut n pasted from a few different places, and needs to be combined, but basically we’re trying to say this: our mission is to find our place in God’s mission here and now; and God’s mission is about pursuit, redemption and restoration of his creation. And we see that our role is to incarnate the message and ministry of Jesus in a specific time and place, for the glory of God. More wordsmithing is likely to ensue, but I hope you can see the progression here..

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Strategic Planning for Missional Churches :: Start, Keep and Stop

PatJanuary 11, 2006

This is Part 4 in the Strategic Planning for Missional Churches series. You can find the whole series by viewing this tag.

Sifting through my notes from last week, I can’t find where this simple item came from. Perhaps it was a Rockefeller idea, perhaps it’s from Gazelles, but it is striking in its simplicity.

3 Questions You Should Ask Your Employees and your Customers
1. What should we KEEP doing?
2. What should we START doing?
3. What should we STOP doing?

The first two are easiest for us to follow through on. The third one is most difficult, and may be the most important. It implies and imparts a sense of focus.

Whenever we create a to-do list (task list, action item list, whatever you call it), you should also have a section on that list of the “To Stop Doing” items.

Applying the Three Questions in Missional Churches

One of the haze-clearing truths about the missional church is that it doesn’t create programs for the sake of having programs; it doesn’t hire staff for the sake of hiring staff; it doesn’t create a mass of busywork in the hope that something “sticks”.

But I also think there is great wisdom in asking both your church community, and your neighboring community, to give feedback about the activity of the church.

John Wimber used to tell this story:

Folks, the world knows what this is supposed to look like. Years ago in New York City, I got into a taxi cab with an Iranian taxi driver, who could hardly speak English. I tried to explain to him where I wanted to go, and as he was pulling his car out of the parking place, he almost got hit by a van that on its side had a sign reading The Pentecostal Church. He got real upset and said, “That guy’s drunk.” I said, “No, he’s a Pentecostal. Drunk in the spirit, maybe, but not with wine.” He asked, “Do you know about church?” I said, “Well, I know a little bit about it; what do you know?” It was a long trip from one end of Manhattan to the other, and all the way down he told me one horror story after another that he’d heard about the church. He knew about the pastor that ran off with the choir master’s wife, the couple that had burned the church down and collected the insurance—every horrible thing you could imagine. We finally get to where we were going, I paid him, and as we’re standing there on the landing I gave him an extra-large tip. He got a suspicious look in his eyes—he’d been around, you know. I said, “Answer me this one question.” Now keep in mind, I’m planning on witnessing to him. “If there was a God and he had a church, what would it be like?” He sat there for awhile making up his mind to play or not. Finally he sighed and said, “Well, if there was a God and he had a church—they would care for the poor, heal the sick, and they wouldn’t charge you money to teach you the Book.” I turned around and it was like an explosion in my chest. “Oh, God.” I just cried, I couldn’t help it. I thought, “Oh Lord, they know. The world knows what it’s supposed to be like. The only ones that don’t know are the Church.”

When you joined the kingdom, you expected to be used of God. I’ve talked to thousands of people, and almost everybody has said, “When I signed up, I knew that caring for the poor was part of it—I just kind of got weaned off of it, because no one else was doing it.” Folks, I’m not saying, “Do some-thing heroic.” I’m not saying, “Take on some high standard, sell everything you have and go.” Now, if Jesus tells you that, that’s different. But I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, participate. Give some portion of what you have—time, energy, money, on a regular basis—to this purpose, to redeeming people, to caring for people. Share your heart and life with somebody that’s not easy to sit in the same car with. Are you hearing me? That’s where you’ll really see the kingdom of God.

From Cutting Edge magazine

The taxi driver’s answer is priceless - and John heard it because he listened to the story of somebody outside his church.

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Wimber quote on church structure

Pat

I have no idea if this is accurately attributed to him as I have no reference, but I found this quote here on Robbymac’s site so I trust it:

“I do not care how you structure your churches, as long as you do not impose those structures on your grandchildren.” - John Wimber

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Strategic Planning for Missional Churches :: Rockefeller’s Four Decisions, Three Habits

PatJanuary 10, 2006

This is Part 3 in the Strategic Planning for Missional Churches series. You can find the whole series by viewing this tag.

In Gazelles‘ thinking, John D. Rockefeller identified four areas in which decisions must be made, and also three habits which allowed Standard Oil to thrive under his leadership.

The success of a company is the sum total of all decisions being made. A Vision is a dream with a plan.

There are four areas in which decisions must be made. They are:

• People: Studies show that 1 great employee is more productive than 3 good ones. Recruit, train, compensate to greatness. Upgrade employees, make the hard decisions to release those who do not fit the vision and culture you are pursuing. Decide to aggressively pursue great people.
• Strategy: These are the decisions that are made in constantly changing environment which allow the corporation to pursue its overarching purpose.
• Execution: These are the decisions about goals and priorities, drawing the team onto the same page, getting into a rhythm of communication.
• Cash: Cash, the result of a profitable past and present, fuels expansion and growth for the future. Make wise decisions about how to invest your resources in order to balance short-term and long-term needs.

Gazelles’ pithy abstraction of this is, “Right People, Doing the Right Things Right“.

Rockefeller’s carved a well-engrained set of habits into his own leadership team and his corporation.

Those three habits are:

• Priorities: Ruthlessly prioritize the work at hand. Don’t get caught in busywork; understand how you spend your time and resources.
• Metrics: Pick three numbers that you can track, daily - weekly - monthly - yearly. Be creative.
• Meeting Rhythm: Gazelles suggest rhythms of yearly - monthly - weekly - and daily meetings (dailys being stand-up, 5-7 min huddles, max). The idea is to quickly and crisply communicate what needs to be communicated up and down the organizational structure. They emphasized heavily two of Rockefeller’s daily routines: in the early days of the company, he walked to work with several of his top executives (who were close neighbors), and he ate lunch with his executive staff daily. He found out more about the company and their lives in those out-of-work times than in the regular times.

Applying the Three Decisions and Three Habits in Missional Churches
This is where application to our context gets a bit more difficult, perhaps.

If decision-making is a key activity of leadership, then decisions around people, strategy, execution and (resources) seem to be viable playing fields.

People decisions for us are questions about who to invest time and energy into; who to disciple or train more directly and who not to; who to woo and who to stay away from.

Strategy decisions - here’s where things get interesting for us. There are two layers to this puzzle, it seems to me. At the top layer, the missional church at its heart does its best to follow the mission of God in its world, and tries to form itself to meet the current cultural needs. We have to be wise in our flexibility, and we have to be wise in our listening to the leading of God’s voice. At a layer underneath that, we have an understanding of the more-or-less unchanging principles that we are implementing, and we can and should make longer-term strategic decisions based on those core values. For example, we’re scheduling our next relationship communication workshop that we offer in our community - 10 weeks of pretty intense relationship-building skills, suitable for marrieds, almost-divorceds, pre-marital hopefuls and just-plugging aways. We know that relationship and cultural engagement are core values for us, and this fits well with what we like to do - even though it’s a bit difficult to post flyers for something and not know what name to put on it, or what website to point people to. Offering marriage workshops, and continuing to serve our neighbors via partnerships with community service groups - these things are continuing for us as we’re navigating the rest of the major decisions we’re undertaking. They are strategies to fulfill our Kingdom pursuit, and our specific values.

Meeting Rhythm - How frequently does the church need to gather for corporate worship? Weekly? Monthly? House church collectives frequently find themselves gathering as single house churches weekly, and multiple churches together less frequently. Rhythm for us also includes celebrating the Christian calendar (not just Easter and Christmas, but at least Lent and Advent, and likely more of the major feast days). There’s a wonderful rhythm in the Christian calendar. Some churches also use the lectionary to help them with rhythm; we haven’t done that. We do, however, use the contemporary collects as corporate prayers, often as call-to-worship prayers (instead of an uptempo song to open a gathering). I would LOVE to mature to a point at which we as a body could practice praying the hours, corporately, daily. In our suburban environment, this is a long way from happening, but the rhythm of praying the daily hours is incredibly helpful to me individually, and must be that much better corporately.

Resources - Huh. OK, our church actively gathers tithes and offerings. We do it as an expression of our dependance upon God in the most difficult area of our lives to give up (our ATM cards). We also do it so that collectively we can fuel mission. We also know that our skills and expertise, and our people, all can be viewed as resources. One of my personal dreams is that we find a way to de-emphasize and simplify the Sunday corporate gathering such that it doesn’t require so much of our resources that it becomes paralyzing. As we grow and are able to make decisions about real estate, I pray that we find leasable space that can be redeemed from a broken environment; that primarily serves the community by acting as a Third Place and proximity space, and that secondarily can be used be the church for corporate worship. I’d rather start a youth hangout or coffeeshop than a corporate office. Of course, this takes resources: time, people, cash.

Enough rambling for tonight. Comments?