Do This (Now)

A couple weeks ago I was talking to a church planter. He’s still about six months out from grand opening. He was mentioning some things he was doing with his launch team and I pretty emphatically told him to push pause and to first spend some time, as a team, answering what Will Mancini calls the “five irreducible questions of leadership”:

1. What are we doing?  This leads to your missional mandate – a clear, concise statement that describes what the church is supposed to be doing.
2. Why are we doing it?  This leads to your missional motives – shared convictions that guide the actions and reveal the strengths of the church.
3. How are we doing it?  This leads to your missional map – the process or picture that demonstrates how the church will accomplish its mandate on the broadest level.
4. When are we successful?  This leads to your missional life marks – a set of attributes in an individual’s life that define or reflect accomplishment of the church’s mandate.
5. Where is God taking us?  This leads to your missional mountaintop + milestones – living language that anticipates and illustrates God’s better intermediate future.

Without asking and answering these questions you can only hope that your team is on the same page. And the truth is, they’re probably not.

If you haven’t constructed a “vision frame” by answering these questions, push pause and take some time with your team to do so. And to get some help with that process, read Church Unique or, even better, bring in a coach from Auxano to help you.