Vision, Schmision…
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Fri, October 02, 2009
- Viewed 53
- (5) comments so far
What the heck is purpose? vision? mission? values? Does anyone really know? Here's a primer and a starting point if you're confused...
Purpose and Values
Purpose and values should never change. They are with you from the beginning of your organization's existence and they should be with you until the end. They don’t contextualize or change with culture. They should always remain. Jim Collins’ research shows that a relentless commitment to purpose and values is the one and only difference between organizations that are built to last and those that are not. It’s not vision, mission, strategy, inventions or money in the bank that makes organizations last, it’s a relentless commitment to purpose and values.
Purpose is the reason why you exist. It's not your vision or mission, or the values that guide you. It's the big idea for why you do what you do. For church communities, I've found this often comes directly from Scripture. It's the reason you're regularly bringing everybody together. It's not how you bring them together or what you're doing when you're together or how often you come together. It's why you come together. And again, purpose should never change.
Values should guide everything you do. They are the glue that hold everything together. Words like "integrity," "honesty," and "humility" are often found in value statements. Values should inform every decision, every strategy, every employee hire and fire, every marketing campaign and every relationship with a vendor. And again, values should never change.
I think this is a good start. What do you think?
Comments
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h3 on Fri, October 02, 2009
I really think we need to continue to re-think these definitions. Thom Rainer’s Simple Church offers a new look at that stuff. He says to figure out your purpose, define a simple process to move people along their faith journey, and define set of values to keep you honest. All three (Purpose, Process, Values), must align. And he suggests that these things ought to be revisited (not necessarily changed) periodically if we are going to continue to be effective.
Michael Dixon on Fri, October 02, 2009
Christ ordained the church, as his body, his bride (scripturally that works); we gather together in times and locations and call those “our church.” The attempt to put into words what our individual narratives of that experience of being gathered is what gets us, like the apostles, gathered in the Upper Room, and “waiting” upon the spirit. Purpose is the narrative representation of what it means to have been there when the spirit descended and to have joined later in response to the emanence of thatauthority in the gathered believers; it is the verbalization of the hope that quickened when the tongue-like flame-like occured or when you joined the believers who expereinced it.
Oliver on Tue, October 06, 2009
ok let cut the fancy talk, vision has been adopted by the church from corporate america to keep program driven culture in the church alive, which basically translates to activity for the sake of activity, programs that are useless in the long run and usually an outcome that is about as unchristian as you can get. I dare anyone to do the following: Look at your typical mega church, than look at what christianity looks like in the new testament, than ask yourself, do they align? of course they won’t, finally ask yourself, what’s the purpose of vision statements? I think they are a complete waste of time.
Michael Dixon on Tue, October 06, 2009
Oliver,
I spent many years in corporate culture, and I have seen many bad adaptations of its practices (some of which were not so good to begin with).
I suspect that many a purpose and mission has not much to do with the growing as the body of Christ, and that many a body of believers would find a statement of mission and purpose gratuitous.
Insofar as the statement of mission and purpose serve other gatherings of believers to begin to organize themselves are they inherently the seed or accretion of activity for activitie’s sake; the seed or spawn of mega churches; an opposition to Christianity?
h3 on Tue, October 06, 2009
Oliver,
Perhaps you are right - but not categorically.
I’ll take my own experiences as example.
I absolutely have been involved with churches where they had vision/purpose/mission statements that amounted to nothing more than something to fill “plaque-space” on the foyer wall.
However, in my current endeavor, it is precisely our purpose statement that keeps us focused on what we believe God fashioned our little tribe to be. It frees me from frivolous programming for programming’s sake. It makes it real easy to determine what we do and how we do it. I cannot imagine leading a group of people, effectively, without our purpose statement. It’s more than fancy words. It defines our ministry.
I think the problem you describe is not with the tool - it with a lack of understanding of how to use it. The beauty of a hammer is lost if it just a paper weight.
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