Finding One's Mission

In the book Repacking Your Bags, authors Richard Leider and David Shapiro state that their research shows that the number one deadly fear of people is “Having lived a meaningless life.” Finding one’s mission, and then fulfilling it, is perhaps the most vital activity in which a person can engage.
--Laurie Beth Jones, The Path

Transformational Church

Is it any wonder then that people live in a state of confusion over the identity and calling of the church? Loren Mead says that the church today exists within a context of ambiguity. The culture is a mixture of openness, indifference, confusion, and hostility toward the church. It is my experience that most people enter the church not knowing just what the church is and its purpose—its identity and calling—or the notion they have is misinformed. That we live in an age of ambiguous cultural perceptions toward the church within a reality of religious pluralism means that the church has to work very hard at being clear about its own witness to the world.

The task of a transformational church in a consumer culture is to assist people to discover their gifts, assume greater ownership of the congregation’s life and mission, and do what works for them. Discipleship is not to exhaust people or fragment families because they spend too much time doing “church work.” Discipleship is putting one’s passions to work in ways that promote wellness and wholeness in the whole of life and in all arenas, in the church and the world, for the sake of Jesus. From the days of the infant church until now, the baptized live in the world among all walks of life.
--Rick Barger, A New and Right Spirit

Vision and Effective Congregations

Effective congregations are led by pastors and a team of leaders who are clear about their mission and focused on achieving a vision. Unlike the majority of congregations that are either on a plateau or declining, effective congregations are healthy, growing, committed to reproduction, and open to changes that will move them from one level of effectiveness to the next...Vision does not necessarily start with the pastor. However, most pastors who arrive to lead congregations that lack vision, hope, and morale will find that if they do not generate vision, no one else will. Committees, vision communities, or people exploring vision as a short-term project do not generate visions that produce systemic change. .
Paul D. Borden, Direct Hit