Why your church needs some sort of guiding statement

“Well, at the [insert denomination here] church they are doing [insert program here].”

“Our [insert family relationship here]’s pastor checks on us more than our own pastor.”

“Twenty years ago we didn’t have enough Sunday School rooms for all the kids. Now we just have a few children who attend occasionally with their grandparents.”

Every clergyperson hears (and maybe even sometimes says) statements like these. It’s natural. We all have hopes and expectations. We look around at other people’s situations as a way of understanding our own. But comparison - even with earlier iterations of ourselves - can quickly turn poisonous. Seeing what we don’t have fuels a scarcity mindset: there’s not enough people, money, air time, power, love, or whatever else to go around. When resources feel limited, we see church as a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos. We grab what we can and stash it away. Needless to say, this is not a growth mindset in any sense. It is focused on survival, which quashes experimentation and playfulness and, often, faithfulness.

That is why it is essential that your church has some sort of guiding statement. It might be a purpose statement, an articulation of why your congregation exists. It could also be a list of core values, those priorities that your people attempt to embody in all that they do. Whatever your touchstone of choice, it can cultivate a sense of possibility while also weeding out initiatives that don’t fit who your congregation is and what it aims to do. It can keep you focused and looking forward rather than lamenting and looking backward. It, in short, is an agent of abundance, and that is scriptural. Anytime people in the Bible tried to hoard, God showed them the error of their ways, often by bringing ruin on their stockpiles. But when they opened their hands in the trust that God was paying attention and wanted good for them, they found themselves holding plenty.

Are many churches shrinking in members and money? Yes. But the best response is not to double down on what we’ve always done or to try to be something that we’re not. It is to claim our purpose and live toward it. This is not a magic recipe for growth in numbers, but it is a key ingredient in increasing our impact on those who need to know about Christ’s love for us all.

Photo by Vanesa Giaconi on Unsplash.