Skip to main content

Fulfilling the Mission: Momentum to take the next step

If I were going to sum up what I've discussed over the past few months it would be something like this:

Our Mission: To fulfill the Great Commission by helping people take the next step on their journey with Jesus
Our Vision: To fulfill the Great Commandment by being a place that honor's God while being irresistible and indispensable to our community.

Milestones Ministry

Next a strategy is needed to accomplish the mission and vision of our church. I call that strategy our Milestones ministry. At it's core it's simply a way to establish goals, a way to plan how to reach those goals, and a way to hold ourselves accountable.   Fulfilling the Mission: Creating the momentum to take the next step.

In order to take the next step we need to ask two simple questions:  (1) where are we going?, and (2) how do we get there?  The answer to question number one is about our goal.  Our goal in helping folks take the next step is to make fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.  The second question answers how to get there.   So as church leaders and workers we need to ask ourselves what are the milestones that we all need to reach and pass in order to reach our goal of being fully devoted Christ followers.

Alongside these individual spiritual milestones, the church also has organizational milestones.  It's important for us to understand that the Christ follower needs a strong church in order to stay on course and the church needs strong, on course disciples to continue its job of building disciples. So alongside our spiritual milestone track, we must also ask ourselves what milestones do we all need to reach and pass in order to be a fully integrated member of our church.

So from an organizational perspective (fully integrated member of our church) milestones might look like:
  1. Connect
  2. Get to know us 
  3. Get involved
  4. Get on board
  5. Grow with us
From a spiritual perspective (fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ) the milestones may look like:

  1. Relationship
  2. Belief
  3. Service
  4. Maturity
  5. Mission
The next step is to work to ensure that we have ministries/events/opportunities that represent each milestone and then to work to encourage and to inspire each individual to take the next step to reach that next milestone. This is the point where we begin to actually plan, organize, and startup actual ministries of the church.  We move from just doing things because we've always done them, or because we enjoy doing them, or because its just what we think churches do.  Instead, we plan our activities and ministries based on whether they either mark or lead to a milestone we believe is essential to reach in order to become a more fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ.

So we ask ourselves questions like:
  • What are we doing to encourage our community to have an ongoing relationship with us?
  • What do we do to encourage and to mark someone's belief in Jesus as their savior?
  • Do we offer opportunities for people to get involved in ministry?
  • How de we encourage a commitment to use of God's word in spiritual maturity?
  • How are we inspiring and marking the next step in our children, our youth, our newcomers?
  • What are we spending energy, money, and time on that isn't working to reach our desired milestones and are we ready to cut it and move to something that will.

Our goal is to move to church programming that is based on goals, priorities, and values and results rather than traditions, personalities, or outdated models.  We're asking what works right now to help reach the next milestone for our particular group.  This leads to more relevant and more focused and more actionable ministry.

So a milestone ministry plan might start out as something like:


  • Relationship: (regular attendance>outreach>follow-up>newcomers group>church membership)
  • Belief (water baptism< new believers class< gospel presentation< decision moments<altar times
  • Service (ministry involvement< gifts class< newcomers group
  • Maturity (biblical worldview/life style< bible based fellowship groups< accountable relationships)
  • Mission (Regular giving, missions support, ministry leadership, personal calling, 


    • This post is the last one regarding church mission/vision/strategy.  I hope its been a bit instructive for leaders, staff, and anyone else interested in church dynamics.


    Comments

    Post a Comment

    Popular posts from this blog

    What's going on?

    The Mission of Pathway Church Greetings Pathway Church (and any others who might end up viewing this)! I hope the day finds you blessed.  As this is my initial foray into the world of blogging, I'm honestly a bit bewildered as to how this stuff works and what I need to do to get it right. Besides the technicalities of it all I'm also stressed about the actual topic and content of my first blog and also what should follow. At least I've concluded that this space will exist to support, expand, and clarify my message as Pastor of Pathway Church. Sometimes it will expand on a sermon topic, other times it may address an ongoing issue at the church. Other times it will speak to contemporary cultural issues that impact you, our church, and it's ministries (there's a lot of that happening now, right?).  All in all, I hope to impact the culture and atmosphere of leadership (and anyone else interested) in our church by having an extra pathway of communication into the hea
    2 comments
    Read more

    The Passionate Core and Transformation Team

    Hey all.  If you're reading this it's mostly likely you've already been invited to what's being called our church passionate core and transformation team.  However you may have no clue as what this really means and why this team is so important to you and your church.  This post is to clarify that for you and to hopefully encourage you to commit wholeheartedly to this team and it's mission for our church. So continue reading to find out more. First and most importantly, there's the real-world need for a living, active, vital church. A church that impacts the lives of it's members and the community around it.  This world needs Jesus more than anything else and the church, as his body, is Jesus in world – as long as it remains connected to Him, the head.  When the body is connected to the head, the church moves with the purpose, passion, and power of Jesus in the world and even the gates of hell cannot prevail against it! The issue is that the church (fil
    1 comment
    Read more

    Strategy for Growth: Values and Milestones

    In my last post I talked about Pathway Church's mission and vision.  Hopefully it wasn't too long or boring for those who cared to check it out.  Today I'm going to follow up with the basic strategy we seek to implement in order to accomplish our mission and vision. Remember, our mission is to help people take the next step on their journey with Jesus, while our vision is to be a church that our community loves to attend and be involved with.  So what's our plan to make it all happen?  Well follow along, I'll try to be brief. Haha! In order to explain our strategy we need to talk about two things: values and milestones. Values Our mission and vision imply certain values that must be as clear as possible to all involved.  These values will then impact our strategy as a church.  So Let's discuss these values. First of all, our mission implies that we value a relationship with Christ.  In fact, that probably the most important value of the church.  It'
    2 comments
    Read more