Avoid Mission Neutral events.

Here are the questions I ask when I’m developing something new.

1. What problem are we trying to address? 

Establish a goal for your initiative.

• It isn’t a good idea to head out on a road trip without knowing where you hope to end up 
  • Without knowing what you hope to accomplish with the projects or events you plan, every other part of the planning process breaks
  • Mission-neutral events waste a tremendous amount of resources
• Examples of goals 
  • Is there a need for Biblical literacy amongst those you shepherd? 
  • Does your congregation need to grow in their compassion for the community? 
  • Does your congregation need to be more generous with their skills? 
  • Each of these is a unique problem that needs to be addressed uniquely.

2. Do we need to invent, innovate, or adopt?

• Seeing another organizations final product can help us learn what we want to avoid
• Seeing another organizations final product can help you identify what needs to change in order to fit your context, your goal, and your mission

3. What do we need to track to know if we’ve hit the mark?

• Define what success looks like
• Some churches are content with online attendance, others value in person attendance 
  • What you track depends on the landmarks 
  • A win for one is a loss for another! 

4. How do we implement based on our resources?

• There are a lot of great things out there that you can’t afford
• Sometimes we want things nicer than what works for our people 
  • Design what you implement for your specific context 

5. How did we do?

• From here, we evaluate. 
• Skipping an informed evaluation is a big loss for the church 
  • Repeatable success in our ministry 
  • Reputable success in other ministries on the team 
  • Best practices to share with other churches 

Bottom line:

Asking yourself these questions before your next major project will help you align what you do with the mission of your church.