“Devoting a little of yourself to everything means committing a great deal of yourself to nothing.”
– Andy Stanley, The Next Generation Leader
As we’ve traveled around visiting campuses one thing that I’ve noticed with many groups is that they try to do everything. They want to have 5 Bible studies, 2 prayer meetings, a worship night, a pizza and game night, and an outreach – all in the same week! Obviously I’m exaggerating a little and these activities are all good things, but instead of spreading ourselves thin and doing many things poorly we should focus on doing a few things with excellence.
Andy Stanley (quoted above) is the pastor of North Point Community Church with over 22,000 weekly attenders. If anyone has the tendency to try and do too much it’s probably a church with that many people involved! However, I’m sure part of the reason that Andy’s church has grown so much is because they have focused on doing a few things really well.
Sometimes it’s hard to break out of old habits or let go of things that your group has been doing for years. So how do you decide what things are worth pursuing and what things should be dropped? Pastor Wayne Hedlund, the Executive Pastor of the church I attend in Lima, talks extensively about the importance of putting together a mission statement, vision statement, and core values for your church. I think that this can apply just as much to your BASIC group. For most groups the mission and vision statements will be similar, but when it comes to laying out your core values this will differ. For example, your mission statement might be: “Reaching our campus with the good news of Christ in order to build up and strengthen the local church.” But when you get to your core values you may put prayer and worship near the top because your group has a strong focus on those things, whereas another BASIC group may put evangelism at the top of their list.
Once you have established those things then you can refer to them every time you come to a leader’s meeting and are trying to decide what programs are worth pursuing and what things should be left behind. If it doesn’t line up with your mission statement and core values then it’s not worth putting time and energy into trying to accomplish. Just remember two things as you go through this process:
1. It will take time to develop a mission statement, vision statement, and core values, but it’s well worth it to clarify your group’s direction!
2. Leaders always have lots of good ideas, so try to let people down easy when their ideas don’t line up with the direction your group has decided on.
For more about crafting mission statements you can check out Pastor Wayne Hedlund’s blog
You can also look at BASIC’s About Us page for examples of a mission statement, vision statement, and core values