pat loughery

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..