Mission Statements are a waste of your (and your staff and your leadership's) time

In reading The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick Lencioni I stumbled on a chapter that made me smile.  

Blather

 

According to Lencioni, Mission Statements are a pox set upon the organizational world by an anti-business consultant sometime in the 1980's.  My experience with Mission Statements in the church-world are that they are part of a "vision" process usually done in disconnected ways and usually are undertaken for the pastor to be seen as "doing something" and "leading".  Mission statements are not the kind of clarifying excerise that folks, especially in church leadership paid or otherwise, should be wasting their one life doing.  Here is the example that Lencioni used and that seals the deal... can you guess which company this is?

_______ Incorporated provides its customers with quality ______ products and the expertise required for making informed buying decisions.  We provide our products and services with a dedication to the highest degree of integrity and quality of customer satisfaction, developing long-term professional relationships with employees that develop pride, creating a stable working environment and company spirit.*

Lencioni advocates for a much more "rigorous and unpretentious" approach to acheiving clarity of purpose and direction.  Employees, volunteers, staff members must arrive at agreement on six simple questions:

1. Why do we exist?

2. How do we behave?

3. What do we do?

4. How will we succeed?

5. What is most important, right now?

6. Who must do what?

 

If people can rally around the answers to these questions rather than jargon and meaningless mumbo jumbo on a t-shirt or coffee cup an organization (business, non-profit, church) has a much higher chance of acheiving organizational health.  What do you think?  Have you used mission statements in your work and have they acheived your goals?  How do others feel about the mission statement if it was produced before they joined your staff or church?

Are you a part of an organization that had a mission statement "handed down" to you?  Do people refer to it in their daily work?

Cheers.

 

*The company is Dunder Mifflin, Inc.  the fictional paper company that is featured on the sitcom The Office.

Comments

[Unlikelyj]

Hey Chris
John Heille here.
A couple thoughts.
1 I agree that many mission statements are disconnected from the day to day life of the congregation. I've seen some created as a reconcilliation exercise after a time of great congregational turmoil and conflict. I've seen others created as part of a visioning process met to give people a common goal. At best mission statements might fit for a moment in time--but I don't think they fit forever.
2) I do appreciate Lencioni's questions: they would no doubt be a great way for a council to start off the year together and they would definitely get the group who answered them together off to a great start. The hard part is translating that common starting point for everyone in the congregation.
3) So I'd suggest a hybrid--look to scriptue and find a verse that everyone can latch onto in their ministry rather than just trying to formulate some perfect statement.
Today I serve a congregation who's mission Statement is Matthew 28:19.
I'd encourage congregations to pick a missional verse and work together towards that common point.
peace to you now and always, John

[Chris Enstad]

Hi John,
Thank you for your constructive feedback. Obviously I put the title of my post a bit towards "11" on the reaction scale in order to get responses and between here and Facebook there has not been disappointment!

One of the things that I notice when in discussions like these is that leaders will tell me what *they* are doing in *their* congregations... that's great to hear! I guess what we need to do at this point in our development as leaders is to start asking "show me" questions. Show me how Matthew 28:19 is transforming your church, bringing organizational health to your team, and leading to success? How would you define success in a Matthew 28:19 church? Are you guys baptizing nations? Literally? Figuratively? When I look at your congregation's trend report, for instance, it appears that you are receiving more members from transferring from other churches than baptizing new believers?

Churches that grow at the expense of other congregations don't reflect that goal in the mission statements so either the statement is wrong or the church is pursuing growth at others expense rather than swimming in the world of "other nations". Now, I'm not really criticizing your actual church per se, I'm sure some of those transfers are from congregations who have left the ELCA , etc. etc. who am I to know everyone's story. But it's one thing to have a mission statement and there is another thing to show us how it is or isn't working.

I'm FAR from an expert but this is the world of questions in my head and heart right now.

Please don't hesitate to continue the conversation and I'm glad to see you "electrically".

CBE

[Unlikelyj]

Hey Chris,
I like these show me questions a whole lot.

In our ministry teams we will once in a while dwell with this verse. This past year the focus of the children, youth, and family ministry has been on Jesus direction "Go". For us "going" in the past 14 months has taken us two blocks down the street to meet 120 kids at school on Wednesday afternoon and bring them here for a fun time we call Chaos.

It's definitely not all nations yet-it might never be-but its a step further into the world than we were making in the fall of 2011. I know of a few baptisms related to Chaos so far and a few families who are coming Sundays who didn't before. I prayer those are first fruits--but I hope the payoff will come in the long run as kids grow up looking forward to being here learning about God's love. I don't believe we've stolen any sheep from other congregations through Chaos--but we do have an open door at Grace to all the kids in Fairmont on Wednesday afternoons.

Peace to you, John

[Chris Enstad]

John,
Thank you for this example. This is what I'm talking about and these are how good ideas can spread and create conversations and catalysts in other environments. I do want to point out that I never used the word "sheep stealing" so I'm wondering if you are sensitive to that perception?

It might be an interesting leadership question to look at your trend report in light of your mission statement and say, "Hey if we have chosen as our touchstone the Great Commission then shouldn't that be the larger number in our demographics?" And I'm not just talking baptisms, I'm talking Adult Baptisms! What kind of strategy would come from conversations around growing that number on the "dashboard". Or missions... how could you start sending more and more missionaries out into the world from your own congregation's number? Or mission starts: what would it look like to plant a new church by sending your 50 most committed family members out with a mission developer to do just that?

I would love to have churches that grow by "sheep stealing" at least be unrepentant about it and put it right there on their own mission statements then at least you will know what you're dealing with. The majority of congregations do NOT set out to do that on the surface but then at least have your ministry match up with your mission... that is not a criticism of your congregation just a general statement.

Peace.