Why does St. George’s exist? If we shut the doors tomorrow would anyone, other than our members, notice?
Our upcoming move into our new ministry center in Alton Village gives us this unique opportunity to ask, study and pray through these questions. Ultimately we want to understand who God is calling us to be and what that looks like. Really, so much of this is already implied in our life together. The answers to these questions form the unspoken reasons why people join, or leave St. George’s. The task is not to re-invent the wheel. Nor is the task to branch out in new, unprecedented directions. Rather, the task of addressing these questions is far more organic. Our task is to put words to the unspoken values that have motivated ministry at St. George’s.
It has been a prayerful task. I have carried it, making weekly presentations to our staff meeting of 10 people, presenting it for prayer and discussion to a leadership retreat of 30 people, seeking the discernment and input of our Executive Council and most recently presenting it for the ratification and recommendation of Parish Council. Each of these groups has prayerfully discussed and unanimously endorses the final document. That is not to say it is perfect. However, it is sufficient.
My hope and prayer has been to develop a clear, concise, memorable and inspirational starting foundation for our ministry.
A clear, concise statement has been compiled after a year and a half of heavy lifting. We began by establishing some foundations. From there we articulated our core values. The foundations and core values helped us to articulate our mission and vision. In some ways it may be helpful to think of this as a pyramid; each level building upon the others.
Establishing the foundations was by far the most work. We worked our way through biblical, theological and historical foundations. We asked the questions, “Why does any church exist?” “Why does an Anglican church exist?” and “Why does St. George’s exist.
In light of these biblical, theological and historical reasons why we exist we began to make bold statements about our core values. In other words, what are the most deeply held convictions that shape and inform everything we do. To state it yet another way, what are the hills-worth-dying-on.
With foundations laid and core values articulated the platform for our mission statement was in place. A mission statement is the broadest possible reason why any organization does what it does. To be frank, we felt that developing a new mission statement was beyond our pay scale. Jesus gave all churches their mission statement before he ascended into heaven and it has not changed.
If the mission is the broadest statement of why we do what we do, then the vision is how we will do it. The vision statement is just that, an attempt to describe the preferable future we aim to create. Each step along the way (i.e., foundations, core values and mission) have brought us closer to answering the question, “Why does St. George’s exist?” The vision statement begins to get boots on the ground. Our vision assumes that God is at work and our task is to join him in the work He is doing in our city. This seems a more faithful approach than making our plans and asking God to retrospectively bless them.
So, after a year and a half we have prayed, studied and researched our way from a vague question to a 20 page document and now we have finally distilled that 20 page document down to four clear statements of Foundations, Core Values, Mission and Vision.
