What is MISSION & why is knowing it important? (Part 1)

We are in the midst of finalizing our “mission statement” for our team.  Why is this important?  Having an agreed-upon mission statement gives us a clear direction for us as a group of people working together to make a difference for God.  It unites us because we know why we are working together and for what purpose.  It is important because it tells us what our team is to be about, what we should be doing and what we should not be doing.  Because we know what we want to accomplish through the grace and power of God, we are able to make wise, unified decisions concerning our strategies and tasks.

How did we come up with our mission?  First of all, it is connected with the Great Commission, Jesus’ mandate for all believers to go… into the world, and make disciples of all the nations…teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always… (Matt.28:16-20).  The Great Commission is God’s idea and it is how we can glorify God as we lift Him up for all the world to see.  Every local mission statement should then be a reflection of God’s mission for our movement. We really don’t have the freedom to have a different agenda than the Great Commission.

The Great Commission speaks of “going into all the world” – what does that mean for you?  There is no way you can come up with a plan right now to reach the entire world!  But you can come up with a plan to reach the “world” where God has placed you - your campus.  Remember- God has called you to help fulfill His Great Commission on your campus. 

The mission statement of many campus teams go something like this:  “Our mission is to reach lost students on our campus for Christ and to help them grow in their relationship with Him,” “Our mission is to fulfill God’s Great Commission on our campus through evangelism, discipleship and equipping laborers for His harvest,” “Our mission is to turn lost students into Christ-centered laborers” or “Reaching students in Krasnonarnia for Christ, discipling believers on our campus, sending missionaries all over the world.”

Our team’s mission statement is:  …to find and equip student leaders to build spiritual movements on their campuses which are winning, building and sending out laborers to transform Russia and the world with the gospel.  Our mission statement is a little different than those above, but it reflects what we as a national catalytic team do to help you to fulfill the Great Commission on your campus.

Mission statements clearly articulate your direction.  It tells you what your purpose is where God has placed you.  Your mission statement will answer the question, “What will we do for whom?” (“reach lost students on our campus for Christ”).   This needs to be answered with “painful specificity” to be useful, “through evangelism, discipleship and equipping laborers.” 

Mission statements aren’t something that you change each time you work on a strategic plan.  Mission statements are something that you hold onto year after year (I’ll speak more about this in Part 2).  It is always wise to periodically revisit the mission statement, especially when someone new joins your team, so that they can decide if God is calling them to the same purpose.

How can it unite you as a group?  The great thing about having a mission is that it inspires unity!  Your mission communicates a unifying theme to all the members of your group and draws them together as a team. It broadcasts, "Here is where we are going.  Let's all pull together and with God's power make it happen!”

Being agreed on your mission doesn’t mean that you have to have the same vision for how it is carried out.  God has given us different dreams, ideas, opportunities, skills, talents, backgrounds, etc. He has probably drawn you together as a team because of your varied interests to enable to you to reach different areas of your campus, to make you more effective than if you all had the very same dream or idea of what to do to reach your campus.

Another thing that happens when you come up with a clear mission statement for your movement is that it encourages those with a different intent or another ministry agenda to look elsewhere.  It’s not that a person is wrong because God has called them to something different than what He has called you to do, but having a clear mission statement will help you all to decide if you should continue to work together.

The Mission Shapes the Strategy  Knowing your mission will help you as a team because it leads and shapes your strategy. Local ministry plans should be a reflection of the mission statement.  The mission statement tells you what you are about, the strategy or plan tells you how you are going to do it.  Anything you do as a team should be something that moves you toward your mission.  If it does not move you toward your mission, then you shouldn’t be doing it. 

Whenever we are working through a new strategic plan, I keep looking back to our mission statement and asking myself, “are the things we are talking about doing in line with our mission?”  Toward the end of our planning time, I look at our Strategic Plan and then at the mission statement to see if there is something in our mission statement that we have neglected to put into our plans.  Basically I use the mission statement as a guide to see if we have forgotten to include something in our Strategic Plan for the year, semester or for the month.

The Mission Gives Us Parameters for Decision Making Your mission statement is a wonderful tool to use in decision making!  You have decided together what your purpose as a group is, so your mission statement sets up clear boundaries about what you will do and what you won’t do.  You will have multitudes of choices and opportunities of strategies and events that you can do as a movement.  Not all strategies and events will move you toward the accomplishment of your mission.  Keeping your mission in mind will make it so much easier to know what to say, ‘no’ to. 

A few years ago our team was asked to hand out flyers announcing an AIDS-awareness event directed toward adults in our community.  It definitely was a very worthy event, but when looking back to our mission, we realized that although it was a great opportunity, it didn’t help us in our context of reaching students on our campuses with the gospel – so we said, “no” to helping with that event.  If the AIDS-awareness event was directed toward students on our campus, giving us an opportunity to share the gospel with them, then we may have made an altogether different decision.

You will find that having a mission statement will be a vital ‘tool’ as you continue throughout your life to lead ‘teams’ toward accomplishing whatever part of the mission God has called you to be a part of.  It might be a little hard as a group to come up with a common mission statement – feel free to take one of the above mission statements and adapt it to your context.  Basically we are all simply re-wording the Great Commission, adapting it to our ‘world.’