How to Facilitate a Biblical Mission/Vision Process, Part 2
Note: You’re reading Part 2 in an RPM Ministries’ blog mini-series on local church mission/vision. Read Part 1: Not Your Father’s Vision Process. I’ve developed this material from my book Equipping Counselors for Your Church.
Capturing Your Biblical Calling
Church ministry can be filled with activities that seem disjointed and disconnected. We wonder sometimes, “What’s the big picture? Where are we headed? What’s our biblical purpose?” The MVP-C process addresses this confusion by bringing focus to our ministries.
People who write and speak on envisioning use different terms in various ways. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that MVP-C is not inspired. What follows is one way to organize and communicate a practical theology that assists God’s people to catch and cast God’s plan for ministry.
Through the congregational process of envisioning God’s ministry, we discover why we do what we do. Envisioning involves:
• Mission: Determining our biblical reason for existence
• Vision: Detecting our unique future focus
• Passion: Depicting the essence of who God calls us to be
• Commission: Mapping out how to move from here to there
Envisioning also is like a map in time:
• Mission tells us where we should be according to God’s Word.
• Vision pictures where God is leading us.
• Passion tells us who we are on our journey.
• Commission provides the road map to travel from the present to the future.
Today in Part 2, we’ll focus on Mission. In Part 3, we’ll overview Vision, Passion, and Commission.
Mission: Your Universal God-Given Calling and Purpose—God’s Compass
One of the legitimate concerns that some Christians express about the envisioning process is that there is typically little or no Bible or theology involved. To counter that problem, before we launch any ministry, we should examine a biblical theology of that ministry. That is true whether we are planting a church or launching a biblical counseling ministry.
The mission statement process examines what God calls every church to be. It clarifies God’s timeless purpose. Picture how this revolutionizes the mission process. You invite everyone who is interested to explore together what the Bible says about the purpose of local church.
A pastor I was consulting with described the benefit. “It’s a no-brainer. How can it be a bad thing to bring your team together to study the Scriptures! Our time of joint exploration of God’s Word made the whole process worthwhile. We became a team, a family, as we studied what the Word says about the local church!”
Mission is a Word-saturated, Bible-focused process of answering the questions: “Why do we exist? What is our purpose?” Mission answers are universal, timeless, and clearly revealed in God’s Word—they are always true for everyone.
A biblical mission provides the theological foundation for ministry. It is God’s compass pointing true north. To use God’s compass, mission statements seek to finish the sentence: According to the Bible we exist to… Or, According to the Bible the mission of our church is to…
To help you to understand the MVP-C process, I will provide a sample MVP-C Statement from my pastoral ministry. The idea is not for you to use these statements for your church—it is simply illustrative.
After several months of congregational interaction about God’s Word, our congregation united around the following church-wide mission.
Our Uniontown Bible Church Mission Statement
According to the Bible, the mission of Uniontown Bible Church is to make disciples
who love Christ, love the Body of Christ, and love the world on behalf of Christ.
Therefore, the five-fold purpose of our church is
to fulfill the Great Commandment and the Great Commission through:
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Discipleship: Equipping God’s People
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Worship: Exalting and Enjoying God
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Fellowship: Encouraging God’s People
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Stewardship: Empowering God’s People
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Ambassadorship: Evangelizing the Unsaved
The Rest of the Story
Join us again for Part 3 as we explore the vision, passion, and commission process.
Join the Conversation
How could this process of joint biblical study about the mission of the church change the typical mission statement process?
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