(Other posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6)
One of the clever things about Rick Warren’s ‘Purpose-Driven Church’ is that it merges together 3 things in the structures themselves:
- A portfolio structure of teams (see Part 1 in this series).
- A focus on spiritual and organisational outcomes in the actual definition of the portfolios (this post).
- A pathway for developing people in faith, life and ministry (the next post).
So the 5 portfolios are also 5 core outcomes for a church, or to put it another way, the 5 core purposes of church (hence ‘the PURPOSE-driven church’):
- Magnification: in all things individual Christians and the whole church worship God above all.
- Mission: people become Christians.
- Membership: people join the church community.
- Maturity: people grow to maturity in Christ.
- Ministry: people become active in using their gifts to build the church.
Define your mission
No you don’t need to adopt 5Ms to be clear on your purpose and focus on outcomes that fulfil your purpose. You could run with different portfolios (or no portfolios or teams at all!) but still be crystal clear on the purpose and outcomes of all the portfolios and teams. This point is powerful all on it’s own, with no Ms at all; the 5Ms doesn’t have a monopoly on outcome-thinking.
Have you defined a mission? The main power of a mission statement is not to have something to put on your website’s ‘about’ page, or to do up a fancy vision document. It is a working tool, to be used every day to give:
- Clarity (‘Who are we?)
- Purpose (‘What are we trying to achieve?’)
- Evaluation (‘Are we doing what we set out to do? Why not?’)
- Alignment (‘Is everything working to that end?’)
- Focus (‘What things don’t really help us do this?’)
Take the time to clarify what you are really aiming to achieve and then focus on doing that, in prayerful dependence on God and loving service of others. Otherwise you will end up doing what your previous experience and tradition has modelled to you that ‘churches just do that’. Otherwise you will end up just doing what takes the fancy of you or others in your church; or responding to needs as they appear.
Set your goals in line with your mission
Have you set goals in line with your mission? Take the time to think really carefully about some of the measures that you are, by God’s grace and blessing, fulfilling that purpose? What are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-framed) measurements that will indicate you are going in the right direction?
For example:
- If you want to make disciples, then a measure that you are fulfilling this purpose is that people have become Christians!
- If you want to help Christians be active in using their gifts to build the church, then a measure that you are fulfilling this purpose is that people are taking on active formal and informal roles in the life of the church.
This stuff will help you think clearly and deliberately about ministry (see Part 2 in this series). It should prompt you to think about how you could better fulfil these purposes and so reach, welcome, edify, equip and mobilise more people – to ‘do all things by all possible means’, as the apostle Paul puts it.
In the end your goals are neither here nor there. They are simply tools to facilitate thinking and focus. As I read once ‘You might not be able to reach the stars, but you can navigate by them’. But goals aren’t the enemy either. If they are Christian goals, then it would be WONDERFUL if they were fulfilled, right?
Otherwise you might end up measuring yourself, rather than by FAITHFULNESS TO A MISSION by FAITHFULNESS TO SOME ACTIVITIES. Rather than the mission of saving souls and maturing them in Christ, I focus on a pattern of activities that may or may not achieve that outcome: 8am Service, 1:1 ministry, Christianity Explored.
5Ms without outcomes
And, as with the other posts in this series, there is a warning to be sounded: adopting the ‘5Ms model’ will fail if you don’t grasp these deeper principles. Your 5Ms Portfolios could, without an outcome-orientation could be reduced to:
- Music and Meetings
- Mailing Lists and Meal Rosters
- Cell Groups and 1:1*
- Jobs and Rosters
- Mission Events and Evangelistic Courses*
*I really wish I could find ‘M’ words for everything in this list. HELP WANTED.
Such a mutant 5M structure would run the risk of doing the various activities and programs, without assessing their effectiveness, just as much as any other ministry, regardless of its structure or model.
