What is Your Mission? (Guest Post: Nathan Magnuson)

I try to meet a lot of people and I try to meet awesome people. This guy is pretty much the most awesome guy I have ever met. He has Masters in Organizational Leadership, he is the author of "Thoughts for the Everyday Leader", and he has more goals and aspirations than anyone else I know. Nathan is brilliant, a leader, creative, a visionary, driven, a great friend and mentor, and just an all around fantastic person. Read his thoughts. You'll be better for it!

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A couple years ago I was having coffee with a local pastor in Atlanta.  He recounted to me all the effort he had put into creating a multi-year church leadership program for men but had garnered only a fraction of the interest and participation he had anticipated.  Why wasn’t this more important to them, he lamented to me.  Contrast that conversation with another one I had recently.  At a “career as calling” event at the church I attend, a friend of mine noted, “I’m a teacher.  It’s more than a job to me since I’m always trying to come up with new ways to reach my students, even outside of classroom hours.  Yet when I go to church or small group, I feel they want me to talk about my spiritual needs instead of what consumes the majority of my day-to-day attention.”

Nathan Magnuson

We ask an awful lot from our church members these days.  From their incomes they fund church salaries, building projects, and missions outreach.  After professional and family responsibilities, they give their time to run church programs.  And most are happy to make their contribution.  “Church” certainly would not be able to function without them.  But creating a tug-of-war for involvement is counterproductive.  Is it possible this distraction with everyday responsibilities could be a good thing?

What would it look like for the church to position itself as a mission partner for members as they go about their daily work, recognizing that God has uniquely gifted and strategically positioned them to bring His image to bear in all the different organizations, disciplines, and activities they find themselves a part of?

Andy Stanley says that our pressing needs are often different than our primary need.  But as churches, many times we are quick to address the primary spiritual needs of our communities without investing in the pressing needs they experience every day.  What would happened if we began to see the lay church member, who is intimately involved in solving the pressing needs of the community, as the church’s best chance to reach a community for Christ?

So what does a mission partner do?  A mission partner helps its operators articulate the needs of their mission and then provides support in accomplishing that mission.  But none of that is possible without first seeking to understand the nature of each operator’s mission.  For a teacher, this could mean caring about students and finding new ways to reach all of them with a quality education.  For an advertiser, this could mean finding creative ways to communicate positive messages.  For a law enforcement, military, or intelligence officer, this could mean identifying new security strategies to ensure the safety of the community.  I’m privileged to work for a consulting firm, so for me, this means finding ways to help clients identify strategic initiatives and facilitate positive change in an organized manner.

So much is at stake in each of these individual missions.  Without a quality education, children encounter significant professional and social challenges.  Without positive messages, culture suffers.  Without security, communities live in fear.  Without leadership and organization, firms make rash decisions that bring harm, not good.

People do not exist to serve the church (brick and mortar), the Church (worldwide community of believers) exists to serve people.  We meet the primary spiritual needs by being and sharing the gospel, and we meet pressing needs by bringing God’s image to bear in each setting we find ourselves in.  Moreover, meeting a pressing need is often the best way to earn the opportunity to meet a primary need since it involves investments in hard work, relationships, and positive contributions over time – things lay church members are best positioned to provide.

So how can churches take more of a mission partnering approach?  There is so much that can be said on this topic, but here are a few ideas:

·         Help your members identify the needs they are uniquely burdened for and positioned to reach.  A great event to have at your church is to bring in a speaker to encourage church members to look deeper into the needs they are passionate about meeting.  Then follow it up with facilitated breakout discussions where each attendee is able to journal and share ideas.  Some attendees will already be on point, but for others, this will serve as a starting point.  The support of coaches and more experienced attendees will help to launch them in the direction of their new mission.

·         Spotlight “secular” mission successes from the pulpit.  Giving missionary updates is pretty common, but ignoring successes from the rest of the church members tells a very lopsided story.  What about the missions of the majority of church members who may not be receiving full missions support and working aboard?  Whenever I speak to students, I inevitably try to ask, “If you are on a mission in the area of (business, law, medicine, athletics, etc), doesn’t that make you a missionary as well?”  Sure, worship services only have a limited amount of time, but the need remains.  Find creative ways to celebrate their success stories!

·         Build a networking system that can identify church member associations, skills, and mission activities.  This may not seem that important at first.  But without a means to identify and connect church members together, the needs your church is able to respond to are significantly limited.  If your church becomes aware of a legal need in the community, and it has a group of 20 legal professionals all connected via a church network, sharing the need can be instantaneous.  Also, such sites facilitate support and collaboration among members, such as sharing best practices, thought leadership, updates, and prayer requests.  The older and more experience can teach and support the younger.  Systems can range from an online directory, a Sharepoint website, or a Community of Practices website.  LinkedIn Groups is probably my favorite platform, but many organizations use Yahoo and Google groups as well.

·         Create small groups that address specific needs.  We need small groups that align to biblical topics, sermon series and Christian theology.  I’ve been a part of many of them.  Interest groups can be a great community-builder as well.  (The “Milkshake Monday” summer group I attended was a hoot!)  But we also need action-oriented small groups that form to address specific needs in the community.  Much can be accomplished in just one semester with the right vision and the right people applying the right skills with a sense of responsibility.  Invent something, solve a problem, design and deliver a training course, build something for someone, write a book together, produce a music album.  Don’t wait until you have all the solutions; start a group to get the conversation going.  Ironically, these outward focused groups can sometimes accomplish the most significant inward spiritual growth.

If your church could do just one thing to better partner in the missions of your members this fall, what would it be?

If you’d like to collaborate with me further, please feel free to connect with me via one of the methods below:

nathan@visionchampions.com

www.visionchampions.com

www.nathanmagnuson.blogspot.com

www.linkedin.com/in/nathanmagnuson