Step 2 of Fulfilling Your Vision - (Defining an Urgent Purpose)

Now that you have identified your list of twelve “champions” to serve as your team, (if not, go to the Step 1 article) you are ready to move on to step two. This step is the engine behind the effort. In their eagerness to “get going” many pastors run quickly past step two pausing only long enough to grab a very generic statement of cause that generates little ownership. Step two is a careful exploration of the urgent purpose that God has called you and your church to bring to life in your community. We begin with what it is not.

An urgent purpose is not a lofty mission statement that lazily encompasses every possible spiritual avenue in God’s Kingdom. A statement such as: “To be the light on a hill for our community and surrounding area reaching to the far ends of the earth with the gospel message” doesn't define action. In step two your goal is to carefully define your purpose -- the hands and feet of your existence -- in such a way that it defines a purpose based action.

Your description of urgent purpose should be definitive enough for someone outside your church to know what effort they will join in joining your church. Urgent purpose is what people want in life; they want to make a difference. The church is the ideal and intended platform for fulfilling that need.

As God reveals to you the urgent purpose or purposes, a story will develop that you will relate over and over to your champions. Your champions will then internalize the urgent purpose, personalize it as their own story and relate it to their circle of influence. The process virally creates a church that is propelled by the stories of impact centered around your urgent purpose. The circle begins with you spending time individually with your twelve champions, relating to them your version of the urgent purpose story. It is a story of precisely who you will serve along with a description of their current need and how the efforts of the church will serve them.

Urgency will be the key to your progress. Think about the “super-human” efforts that have been accomplished when time is of the essence. You get a call that a friend is dropping by and your family launches into a whirlwind of house cleaning that would have taken hours and not minutes to accomplish. A neighbor pounds on your door screaming that they need a ride to the E.R. as their child has been hurt. You drop everything and run. Urgency moves obstacles and keenly focuses the mind and senses on resolute actions. The church has lost that sense of urgency. In its absence, we slowly plod through actions and decisions more focused on the church bylaws than on those in our community who have an urgent need for our urgent purpose. As the pastor, creating a sense of urgency is your responsibility.

An urgent purpose should always have a beneficiary. Constructing a church building is not an urgent purpose, training workers is not an urgent purpose, raising money is not an urgent purpose -- they may be supporting efforts, but they are not the purpose. There has to be a face to our efforts. In many churches, we have lost that face. The only faces we see are the faces that we recognize but don’t really know -- the ones that show up every Sunday and sit for an hour without much interaction. Often, it’s not even their face -- it’s the back of their head we recognize. As you share your urgent purpose with your twelve champions, you must be able to describe in detail who you desire to serve. You must know their needs. If you have lost contact with those in need, go visit them. Take pictures of them. Write down their story. Capture the emotion of their challenging life, the emptiness they long to fill. Use these details as you relate the urgent purpose to your champions.

Urgent purpose will become the banner under which you move forward. It will become the screen through which you pass choices. If an effort does not move your purpose forward, you should remove it. The day-to-day movement of your church should support the purpose. Anything outside of that effort will be a distraction.

Step two will be the most critical step in the series as you align your church around a central purpose. It is shared initially with your twelve champions individually and then eventually as a group of twelve. They then begin to build their ministry champions in their part of the overall effort following the same individual to group pattern of sharing the purpose. As the consensus of purpose grows from you, outward in a concentric circle, your church will begin to experience the joy and hard work found in fulfilling the vision that God has specifically given to you for your community.

Here are a few examples of an urgent purpose:

Adopt a specific 6 block section of the city to provide food, clothing, job training, minor health care and spiritual support for every willing family within 2 years of inception.

Open a facility for victims of spousal abuse and operate as a church ministry to have capacity for temporary shelter and transition services for up to 100 women and their children to be completed within 3 years. Once established, open an additional center every 3 years.

In the next 12 months, lease space in the heart of the business district to create a “Life Resource Center” providing career, life-balance and chaplaincy counseling to the 3,000 workers that converge daily.

Open a “strip-mall” family counseling center within 9 months housing 12 family counselors to provide free marriage and family counseling to the community. Support the counseling efforts by organizing and training 100 couples over the next 12 months to serve as “marriage mentors” for 400 area married couples to provide ongoing support and discipleship.

Construct a “parish clinic” within 12 months on the church campus to provide free to low cost health care for children living in poverty. Adopt the children and their family to provide additional support as needed.

Organize a team of workers to put in security measures (doors, locks, lighting) at the home of 500 elderly adults in the community over the next 2 years. Organize routine visits with the elderly to assist and encourage in other ways.

Organize and train church members to “adopt their block” within the next 6 months to include a block survey of needs and the provision for those needs through church resources to include support groups, counseling services, financial assistance, job training and discipleship.

As you seek to develop your urgent purpose message give it the careful consideration it warrants. Slow down. Start with a “blank sheet” approach and determine what God has for you. If your urgent purpose looks a lot like what other churches are doing, spend more time trying to uncover the very specific purpose God is calling you to lead. Organize that purpose into various lengths of descriptions so that you can give a two minute “elevator speech” up through a one hour detailed description. You will use these versions in various settings with your twelve and then again with their twelve and so on which is explained further in step three of this series.

In the beginning don’t worry about having too narrow of a focus. The common church-wide reaction to a very specific ministry opportunity is to fear leaving other needs unmet. In reality, in their good intention to not leave anyone out -- they leave everyone out by not doing anything. Start somewhere. You will naturally migrate to adding additional efforts to your purpose. You will also find that the opportunities serve as a “hands on” training ground for bible study and community groups to experience servant-living through the purpose efforts. The goal is to be an engaging, purposeful church.

Urgent purpose will become the rally cry of your church. You will quickly see that once the church experiences the impact of their efforts, they will want to add additional initiatives to your purpose list. Champions will become self-starters and will direct their twelve into other aspects of your overall church purpose. It will be an inspiring time of growth and impact for your church. Begin now in discovering or organizing the exciting purpose that you and your church are perfectly suited to do.

Here are links to all 4 steps:

Step One - Engaging Ministry Champions
Step Two - Defining an Urgent Purpose
Step Three - Focused Communication
Step Four - Aligning Effort