From Jeff
Yesterday Mack introduced a mission and vision for DBC. You'll be hearing more about this in the coming weeks, but I thought we'd get your reactions along the way.
He wants us to become a "new testament" church defined by Christ in the center, prayer as the key, Holy Spirit as our guide, Scripture as our play book, and evangelism/discipleship as a lifestyle.
In brief, this is how the mission and vision are spelled out...
Mission: To love and become like Jesus
Vision: We envision a church passionate about becoming like Jesus and committed to transforming our community and the world.
These statements came about as a result of several long meetings with the ministerial staff. We finished up last week with an all day Thursday and half day Friday meeting.
Mission was defined as what every church is supposed to be doing. Vision was meant to be specific to DBC. This will replace "loving family. loving God" as our mission and vision for the next several years.
I'm sure you have thoughts and questions. I'd love to read what you have to say...
NOTE: Anyone can comment; you don't have to have a blogger account. Just click "comment" below, type your comment and then select anonymous. MAKE SURE TO SIGN YOUR NAME if you want us to know who you are.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Mission and Vision for DBC: What do you think?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
Having spent the past 10 years working in a communications department for $1 billion+ national corporate office, I've been a part of a lot of mission/vision statement conversations. Sometimes I think they're a bunch of hogwash although I guess there is some merit in case studies showing those organizations that have a clear, united direction tend to survive/be successful longer. I realize church isn't like the corporate world, but I'm assuming the process for creating/adopting a vision/mission statement is probably fairly similar.
To me, a mission really has to really say something on it's own to it's audience without having to have leadership offer a 5 minute dissertation explaining it. It also must not be "corporate" speak/jargon. So, without offending someone as I'm sure ya'll spent hours and hours on this (I remember those meetings), I like the simplicity of the vision but the mission isn't compelling to me. But, you know what really did speak to me:
Mission:
"To be a church defined by Christ in the center, prayer as the key, Holy Spirit as our guide, Scripture as our play book, and evangelism/discipleship as a lifestyle."
Now that, I understand and am somewhat inspired by.
Funny you use the word "Compelling." That word was used a lot in our meetings. Now, whether what we came up with was actually compelling or not remains to be seen.
Ok, so do either of these statements help us decide what types of activities we will or will not support? Does they influence every decision we make with money/resources? If they don't, then they won't be worth the paper they are written on (or the bits they are stored on).
My gut tells me that we keep doing the same things, just like every other suburban Baptist church. And that disappoints me, because I would really like to see us pump out a vision/mission statement that provided some practical and radical guidance. Like, "Reaching the Dunwoody business community through small groups" or "Proving a place of prayer and reflection for North Atlanta" or "Igniting the Spiritual Intellect of North Atlanta and the world". I'm not advocating these statements, I'm just giving examples that would clearly indicate HOW we were going be on mission.
As it is, our Vision statement might as well be "To grow or maintain the membership through whatever works, including but not limited to Jesus". Actually, I kind of like that one.
Michael
I'd like to see DBC become a church more focused on encouraging and utilizing its members' spiritual gifts. And by that I mean "Gifts of the Spirit", not just talents, skills, and abilities. The most spiritually uplifting worship services I've ever attended have been the ones where the congregation, not the ministers, are leading the services through their spiritual gifts. Certainly, this is not a traditionally Baptist format, but Baptists also don't typically tap in to their spiritual gifts. Most don't even know which particular gifts the Holy Spirit has blessed them with. It just seems that the body would be better served, and a more deeply bonded unit, if members could better educate themselves about the use of their spiritual gifts.
My question is how far are we willing to go to fulfill this mission? becomming like Jesus and transforming community is a huge undertaking which could challenge the way that we like to do things. What if it meant totally changing the way that we do worship? What if it meant turninng our backs what we thought our goals as individials are? Historically, communities aren't transformed by those of us tha cling to cushy lifestyles and middle chass ideals. They are changed by those who are willing to take risks and look crazy at times. If we really chose to follow this, it will have ramifications in every aspect of our lives and worship.
My fear, though is that we will be one more bourgeois suburbonite church.
One of my desires is to be a part of a community that lives out a faith that is exciting, challenging and a little dangerous at times. As it is, I find that most churches I've been a member of demonstrate a faith walk that doesn't enspire me much.
R.L. Gillert
There is no need to wait for any church to become risky. You can become that yourself. Let's not assume that this mission applies to anyone other than the individual reading it who claims DBC as their church community.
We could not have set the bar any higher than desiring to become like Christ. We will be judged by our own standard.
As for Spiritual Gifts, we should consider what we already have to work with for sure.
Keep the comments coming.
OK, that new vision/mission is great and all, and I am glad that the whole staff had some input in it and not just one guy, but what does that really mean for the church? How does that really differ from "creating fully devoted followers of Christ" or whatever catchphrase the last mission was?
Like Amy said, sometimes those things are high falutin' and don't have a lot to do with reality, and I think technically any church that worships the risen Christ is a New Testament church.
I am encouraged about the new direction(?) of the church, as it does seem to admit that something was wrong before. My questions concern more the how of fulfilling the new mission/vision and not the why, so to speak. If all we do is throw a fancy new mantra out there and then it is business as usual, then we are just wasting our time.
Hopefully, we can blow up a few things and start over and make DBC fulfill the new mission. However, it will call for some tough decisions. If something was wrong before, and that is usually why you see mission/vision changes, it will be hard to change that when the people responsible for the wrong (staff AND members) are also the ones responsible for the new.
I look forward to hearing more about what Mack has to say in the coming weeks.
Jeremy
I have to apologize for my earlier comment as it was a bit cynical (third comment). I was at leadership team last night and heard Mack speak about this vision and I really got the sense that it was causing some good things to happen among the staff. Like Jeremy I don't get real excited about how we word our Vision/Mission statement, but anytime we really challenge the status quo with a hard look at scripture, that's a good thing. We didn't need a new Vision statement to do that, but it seems the meetings associated with writing the new statement have been a catalyst for that process.
okay, so I came accross a little radical in my last post. What else is new. Now, here are some questions that I am wrestling with:
What do we see as the New Testament church? The apostolic age? The church up until 100 a.d.? Would this include the early church fathers? Is this idea based only on Acts, or do we take into account what we read in the epistles? Would this idea of the New Testament church take into account historical extra-biblical accounts? Would in include the earliest church writings such as Clement of Rome’s epistles or the Didache?
What is our idea of the image and work of Christ? To what point is this idea culturally shaped? How to we plan to approach the goal of loving Christ and becoming more like him? More activities? Practicing a practical spirituality? Would it include teaching and encouraging the use of spiritual disciplines? Would it include purposeful discipleship?
What community are we trying to impact? Those who live within five miles of the church? Those who own houses? Would in include those in subsidized housing? Would in include young families or professionals who are living paycheck to paycheck? Do we make cultural or economic assumptions about those who live near the church? In what ways are we trying to impact the community? How do we know if we are making an impact?
rlg
Let's start with loving Jesus and see where that takes us. We must be a church in this era. We can not respond to the needs of the past. What does it mean for us to become like Christ here and now? Only the Spirit can tell us.
Do we have the courage to be like Jesus? Do we even know what that means?
It's worth trying to figure out. At our core, that's what we want anyway - to know Jesus and what he would have us do. There are always more questions than we can possibly answer.
The staff is currently reading through the book of Acts. So is the leadership team. It's exciting to see us engage Scripture and see where the Spirit leads. It might lead to more chaos. But, at least it will be chaos motivated by a desire for Christ than hopefully our own agendas.
We're coming to the end of our self made rope as it were. I pray we are returning to our first love and doing the things we did at first.
If, as a church, we can call people to Christ - to read about, pray to, love and obey him - then I can't imagine any greater accomplishment.
It's that simple.
Post a Comment