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Seven
Dynamics for Advancing
Your Church in Missions
Page 4 — Dynamic #2: Management
Vision
Management is the process leading and empowering the church to carry out vision.
The role of management leadership is to help individuals in the congregation
find their part in the vision. This places the mission leadership in a very
active role of recruiting individuals of every age to participate in the mission
vision of the church. Vision without management leads to frustration.
This
view of management is a departure from the traditional view of mission participation.
The traditional challenge to churches has been “some can go, some can
give, all can pray.” I have learned that this view is limiting and even
demotivating. Even the terms “goers” and "senders” are too
simplistic. Missions used to be "long term” and “over there”
and therefore limited to the professional missionary. While professionals
are still needed, many opportunities now exist doing “short-term”
work “right here” where lay people can become involved. Personal
involvement is a primary motivation for contemporary audiences. The function
of management leadership is to help every member to use his or her spiritual
gifts and experiences to help carry out the mission vision of the church.
Mission-active churches find creative ways for getting individuals directly
and personally involved in local and foreign cross-cultural missions. Short-term
missions, international students and local ethnic ministries are among the
most common methods used.
Although
the management structure will differ from church to church, there is normally
a “missions pro,” either a volunteer or staff, who is the key vision
imparter. The mission pro also has the ability to organize teams whose main
purpose is to get different types of people involved to carry out the vision
of the church. Joel Roberts, mission pastor at Evergreen Baptist Church in
Rosemead, California, has forty-seven different teams in his church involved
in local domestic and foreign mission projects. Roberts says that missions
has become the “in-thing” for the church. Personal involvement on
the part of members has been the main key. Incidentally, mission giving in
this church has gone from $70,000 to $400,000 per year in just five years.
The
management dynamic also includes a strategic plan. Effective mission programs
have a written plan that includes a motto, a vision statement, core values,
strategy and goals. Mission-active churches do not fly by the seat of their
pants! They know exactly where they are going and what they need to get there.
Aubrey Malphurs' book “Developing a Vision for Your Ministry in the 21st
Century” is very helpful in this regard to explain how to develop a strategic
plan.
As
a suggestion, one of the routes to getting people involved in frontier missions
may be to give them a hands-on exposure to regular missions. Then in the context
of regular missions, people can be challenged with the needs of the unreached
on the final frontiers. Personal involvement is key to mobilizing churches
for missions, including frontier missions!
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