Mission Leader

Are you a pastor or mission leader in your church? Are you curious about just how your church is doing in missions – in local and global missions? Are you wondering if your mission and vision and alleged values match up with your passion and behaviors? Do your missional systems get you to your desired outcome?

For the past ten years, MissionLeader has used an assessment tool for coaching church leaders, specifically related to mission health. A friend at efurther.com has just put the assessment tool online at http://www.missionleaderinsight.com/

The survey allows you and/or a coach to compile a church’s:

• Missional Passions and Strengths,
• Missional Equipping and Multiplying,
• Missional Engaging both Locally and Globally,
• Missional Cooperating and Partnering,
• Praying for Missions,
• Missional Leadership and Decision Making Processes and
• Budgeting for and Investing in Missions.

When I use the survey, I have multiple church leaders complete the survey. I compile the data and use the results in my coaching process. The survey is easy to complete. It can be completed quickly in a cursory fashion or it can be done very thoroughly, especially when the financial data is entered by those involved in the budget process. You can begin the survey, save it and come back later to complete it.

Why gather the information in the first place? My goal is to establish a benchmark. I want churches to see where they actually are today so they can make healthy goals and plans for the future.

What do the surveys usually reveal? That churches invest far less than they think, especially in the least reached. Churches continue the basic pattern of going where it’s easiest to go in missions, giving to pet causes, responding to random needs that come up, listening to influential or available cause or relational “lobbyists” within the church to the exclusion of biblical strategy. Churches generally don’t have any framework that gives them permission to say, “No.” Why say “no?” So you can strategically say, “Yes to the most strategic.”

What can churches do after taking a look in the mirror through a survey such as this one?  Get Honest, Get Biblical, and Get Focused.

When churches look in the mirror regarding their actual missional passions and actions, pastoral and missional leaders have an opportunity to lead their church toward biblical and strategic missional discipleship.

The Premise: Obedience to God’s Word leads to local church-based biblical objectives, which bolster right practices that over time contribute to lasting values, which ultimately enable God-sized dreams to be fulfilled.

Step one of change is the evaluation process. I have yet to find a church that is at ground zero when it comes to missions. The church may be brand new, but there are notions about missions, assumptions about missions and biblical foundations that are either correct, errant, or seriously lacking.  In many cases, church leaders over-estimate their missional activity. Church leaders generally admit, we are not doing enough missions, but we tend to give ourselves too much credit for our missional effectiveness.  We also give ourselves too much credit for mere activity as opposed to strategic activity.

Evaluation involves the visional leadership and staff of a church walking with her core leaders through a process of viewing, admitting, and addressing the current realities and benchmarks of their churches “State of the Mission.” Evaluation involves answering the question: What do we say we are doing in missions, and are we doing what we allege we are doing in missions?   Why or why not? The process involves a clear look at finances, leadership, equipping, geographic involvement, systems, and the decision-making processes in missions.   The goal of evaluation is to reframe missional values, systems and practices.

Reframing involves clarifying biblical principles and priorities for Jerusalem, Judea & Samaria and Ends of the Earth Ministry.

Assistance in the process of evaluating and reframing is what this tool offers, but the best assistance comes through a missional coach. A number of organizations and individuals are experienced at coaching.

Key church leaders must invest time delving into God’s Word and comparing biblical principles with their unique church history and character. In addition, the church’s decision-making process needs to be evaluated.

So try out the tool, see if it might be helpful to you and your church. http://www.missionleaderinsight.com/

Much thanks to my friend Mike Lopez for forwarding this article my direction. Tim Elmore of GrowingLeader.com has written an informative article about the uniqueness of the up and coming generation.

Take a look.

From Growingleaders.com

History is full of people who’ve gone first, especially during the last century. There is something about being first that tugs at the human spirit, and pushes it forward.

• Neil Armstrong was the first human to walk on the moon.
• Howard Perry was the first black man to enlist in the Marines.
• Second Lieutenant Kristin Bass was the first female F-16 fighter pilot.
• Roger Bannister was the first person to run a mile in under four minutes.
• Ann Bancroft was the first woman to reach the North Pole on foot
• Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.
• Sergei Krikalev was the first cosmonaut to spend ten months in space.

Did you know you have some “firsts” on your campus as well? Your high school or college students are among a generation who’s the first to experience a number of realities. In fact, because they’re initiating these realities, they may present a challenge to your parents and teachers. Adults are grappling with how to raise this population of kids who grew up on-line, with a screen in their hands. The pixels and format of those screens have re-wired their brains: they think differently, react differently, communicate differently, and process information differently than adults. Some call them “screenagers.” Consider the following “firsts” they represent.

This is the First Generation of Youth Who:

1. Doesn’t need adults to get information.

Consider how this difference changes the role of an adult. Because information is everywhere, we are no longer brokers of data. They don’t need us for information, but for interpretation. We must help them make sense of all they know. Our job isn’t to enable them to access data, but to process data and form good decisions.