Church Growth Question # 2

On Church Growth Consulting we are always looking for ways to help grow the church and to help you grow your church.  We are providing a series of questions to help you think through the process of church growth.  Here we go with question number 2.

What is Your Church Mission Statement?

A follow-up question would be: Does your congregation know the mission statement?

A clear, concise mission statement is a very helpful tool in thinking through church growth.  Once you have a mission statement in place you have something to evaluate all your ideas by.  When you are considering a new idea, you make sure it fits into your mission statement.  If it does, then it is worth pursuing.  If it doesn’t, then you should probably pass on the idea.  I will use our church mission statement as an example.  The first time we started the process of developing a mission statement we came up with this:

Advancing the Kingdom of God by living the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

This statement was built around Matthew 22:37-40 and Matthew 28:18-20.  We feel that it allows for a good mix of outreach and in-reach, keeping a good balance of evangelism, teaching, worship, fellowship, and discipleship.  Over time, however, we realized that our congregation didn’t seem to connect with the statement.  What we did was change the statement a little but not the focus of the statement.  Our revised mission statement is now:

Advancing the Kingdom of God one person at a time.

We work this statement into every meeting we have.  We include it in discussion and in prayer.  It is good to know that we have  a purpose and that we are doing things in the Kingdom on purpose.  Take some time to pray about your Mission statement.  It will be worth whatever time you invest in developing it.