The ’90s Called (Part 1)
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The ’90s called, and they want their strategic planning process back. That binder that’s still on the shelf. The 10-year vision that has come and gone.
So many churches are still doing vision, planning and strategy following an old playbook—a 30+ year-old playbook. Is there a more modern way to unify your church body around your vision?
In this series, Sean and I will kick off 2025 by helping you learn a more nimble, actionable approach to planning and aligning your staff and church around a common purpose.
And in Part 1, we’re picking on church mission statements and sharing what makes more sense:
- why so much of the thinking about mission statements is dated
- why having defined the problem is NOT the same as doing the work to solve the problem
- why knowing your mission field is more important than your mission statement—and how to identify your mission field
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PlainJoe has expertise in strategic, spatial, and digital storytelling, from brand development to architecture, website design, and beyond. Learn more at plainjoe.net.
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Transcript
Sean:
Well, welcome to the Unstuck Church podcast. I’m Sean, your host, and joining me today is the brilliant, funny, frozen Amy Anderson. Amy, how cold is it in Minnesota right now?
Amy:
Let me see. Look at my watch. Oh, we’re up to 10 degrees. There we go.
Sean:
All right.
Amy:
It was four below earlier.
Sean:
Heat wave.
Amy:
Balmy
Sean:
Gross, gross. Amy, did you know that we’re scheduled to work with over 60 churches already in the first quarter of 2025?
Amy:
I did not know that. That’s a bit scary. No. Exciting. Exciting.
Sean:
It is. It’s a little bit of both. Both with on the ground consulting and our implementation coaching that we’re doing. So we’re leading them through a process to plan, structure and implement intentional strategies to reach and disciple more people. And that process looks very different than some of the conversation we’re gonna have today and the processes we’re gonna talk about. We’re kicking off the first series of 2025 with a little classic Unstuck snark and some really practical suggestions to help you lead an unstuck church this year. So tee us up, please, Amy.
Amy:
Well, Sean, the nineties called and they want their strategic planning process back.
Sean:
I love it.
Amy:
In all seriousness, I think the nineties are trending again. I think my curly hair is coming back. Have you seen the Taco Bell commercial yet?
Sean:
Yes, I like that one. The nineties.
Amy:
The nineties Gordita Supreme is back. I remember when we were talking about this last fall, and I think it was Tony, you joked that so many churches don’t realize that the nineties ever left. And there’s probably some truth in that.
Sean:
That’s probably true.
Amy:
But in 2025, let it be known that there are better ways to align your staff and your church in order to accomplish your purpose, your mission. So gone are the nineties versions of crafting a 10 to 20-year vision.
Sean:
Oh thank goodness.
Amy:
A full binder of strategic buy-ins that often sit on a dusty, heavy wood bookshelf, right?
Sean:
I remember those days.
Amy:
And that’s what I wanna get into today. We wanna help our pastors lead more nimbly in 2025 and create plans that actually drive action, not dust piles.
Sean:
Absolutely. Yes. All right. Well, let’s dive in. We’re gonna pick on mission statements today. What’s the tension that you’re sensing around the whole concept of mission statements?
Amy:
Well, in the nineties, I think every organization was obsessed with crafting the perfect mission statement. They’d spend literally months in meetings, wordsmithing every syllable, then proudly putting it up on the wall, and sometimes chant it altogether during a service, that was in workplaces. But churches, it actually, I think I’ve said this before, but it reminds me of this old Dilbert comic strip. Do you remember Dilbert?
Sean:
I do.
Amy:
Oh, shoot. Good. Good. I thought I was that much older than you. But it’s an office based one, and the meeting is called to order, and they’re like, today we’re going to brainstorm our mission statement. And then there was, you know, no one says anything, and there’s like seven cells where no one says anything. And then on the eighth one someone goes, I think we should start with the, and then everyone jumps on it and why that’s not the right word to start with. So I think they can just get over-engineered, right? Overthought. Overly complex, time-consuming, and honestly, sometimes even dividing people in the church over how we’re changing or saying our mission statement.
Sean:
Alright. So Amy, for fun, to illustrate this, I thought we’d look at some bad examples of mission statements, and I’m gonna pick on marketplace businesses here rather than churches, just to illustrate the problem when a mission statement goes wrong. So the Hershey’s company, at one time, their mission statement was Undisputed Marketplace Leadership.
Amy:
For real?
Sean:
That was it. Undisputed Marketplace Leadership. Now, thankfully they changed it, and it ended up being, Making More Moments of Goodness.
Amy:
That is better.
Sean:
Much more inspiring, right?
Amy:
Yes.
Sean:
Absolutely. The Home Depot, I love the Home Depot. I think it’s a great store. The Home Depot. Here’s their mission statement. The Home Depot is in the home improvement business, and our goal is to provide the highest level of service, the broadest selection of products and the most competitive prices.
Amy:
Wow.
Sean:
Not very inspiring.
Amy:
Not very portable.
Sean:
Not at all. Not at all. Hard to memorize it. Explains what they do, but not very inspiring. Not very portable at all. One more. The Dell Company, I used to have a Dell computer probably in the nineties, Amy.
Amy:
Probably.
Sean:
Dell’s mission is to be the most successful computer company in the world at delivering the best customer experience in markets we serve. Blah.
Amy:
That’s awful.
Sean:
Absolutely. So there’s some examples of when mission statements go wrong.
Amy:
Yeah. So those were great examples of terrible mission statements. I actually did a little Google search too, and it was like back in 2013, they had like the worst church mission statements. I think they said one of them had like over 90 words in it.
Sean:
Oh my goodness.
Amy:
So that’s why that word portable, really, you wanted to just flow out of yourself, out of your people. But here’s why I think the way we’re describing mission statements, how it comes together is dated because honestly, just clarifying your mission, vision, and value statements, and then maybe running these old versions of the same old playbook to reach people for spiritual formation, it doesn’t necessarily help pastors lead unstuck churches.
Sean:
Right:
Amy:
In fact, those components of mission and values, which we describe as discipleship outcomes, those are two of the three foundational aspects of our strategic alignment pyramid. And why? Because they are foundational. Meaning these are things that rarely change.
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
Your core beliefs, your theology, what you believe probably doesn’t change. Then there’s our mission or our purpose. And again, you might do some wordsmithing now and again, but let’s not overthink it. And then there’s the desired outcomes that we wanna see in people’s life. I think it’s important to remember that those foundational levels really don’t change. And while we might need to wordsmith it now, and again, those layers should be set. The energy for pastors who wanna lead unstuck churches need to be spent on the direction and action levels of the pyramid, because that’s where we determine and assess our ministry approaches, our strategies. Sean, those should change. I swear some people are still running plays from the nineties in their ministry strategies.
Sean:
That’s right.
Amy:
So everything else around us is changing. We need to have an organization and a leadership style that’s agile, where we’re trying new ways to reach and discipleship people. Because going back to the foundation level, the reality is we all have the same mission from Jesus. He didn’t call it that. He called it a commission. You know, he gave us authority and entrusted us with the call to reach people to teach them what God commanded and make disciples. And honestly, that’s the same for every church. It’s Matthew 28.
Sean:
That’s right.
Amy:
It’s the great commission. So we don’t have to overthink the mission statement for our churches.
Sean:
That’s right. And we’ll include an example of that strategic alignment pyramid, so you can see the foundational direction and action levels in our show notes. And if you don’t have those, make sure you go to theunstuckgroup.com/podcast to get those. I would encourage pastors to really think through what your mission statement sounds like, particularly to people outside the faith. People don’t want to be the target of a mission, right?
Amy:
Right.
Sean:
And so one of the key shifts that needs to happen is we need to shift from mission statement focus really to mission field focus. You can be a healthy church without a great mission statement. We could just go back and say, the great commission is our mission statement. Which really is a great mission statement, but you can’t be a healthy church without knowing who your mission field is. A few years ago we met with our friend Carey Nieuwhof, and he said something to the effect of, in today’s world, we need to be more missionary than pastor or preacher. A mission statement is just a statement that answers the question, why? Why do we exist? Why are we here as a church? It’s not a win in and of itself. It defines the problem to be solved. And many churches act like having just defined the problem is the same thing as doing the work to solve the problem.
Amy:
Well said.
Sean:
Amy, before we move on to the solution side of things here, I want to take a moment just to thank our podcast sponsor, PlainJoe. With PlainJoe, churches can really unleash the power of their church’s story. Plain. Joe has a creative, fun-loving team of designers, architects, and specialists. They come alongside churches to help excel in their storytelling and reach people who need the church the most. PlainJoe has expertise around strategic, spatial and digital storytelling, from brand development to architecture, to website design, and many other things. And you can actually learn more about their services in their team at plainjoe.net.
So, Amy, let’s get on the solution side of this. What do pastors need to focus on instead if they wanna focus and align their team around God’s call for their church?
Amy:
Yeah. So I’m gonna build off of what you just said, Sean. Like we said, instead of getting stuck in mission statement wordsmithing, churches need to get crystal clear on who they’re actually trying to reach in their community. So I’ll just go into, you need to clarify who you’re trying to reach, because that gives you a basis from which to assess everything that your church is doing. We have, I’ll use a marketing term. Your target market doesn’t sound churchy. But really, it helps you assess everything that you’re doing in your church when you have clarity around who you’re trying to reach. It also gives you a basis for measuring whether or not your church is healthy and how it pursues that unique call to reach people in the community where God placed you. It focuses your church on where you are and forces you to process through the ways that you’re doing church. Because every church, we always say, you need to look where God’s placed your church. That’s probably the people that you’re supposed to reach. So who should always come before what. And again, if you look at Apostle Paul’s life, you know, he boldly changed his tactics for evangelism based on who his audience was. Based on where he was. And who he was trying to reach.
So let me give you a couple of examples of some, I just want look through some of the churches we served. Here’s how they describe it. So one group said, we wanna reach our mission field. Our de-churched busy 28 to 43 year olds who are raising kids and they want church for their kids in Isanti County. It goes after a specific age range. It goes after a spiritual condition. It’s got, they added that location factor. Now, contrast that with the church I served out in California. Their mission field is a diverse English speaking, 30 to 50-year-old professional that are raising families in the Tri-Valley area and are not following Jesus. You know how that church has to teach. This is a very affluent, well-educated area. So when I say it informs your tactics, they need to pay attention to what they teach, the language they use, both of these churches, based on that mission field of who they’re trying to reach. Another one here, 25- to 35-year-olds in the early adulting pre-commitment stage of life. It’s so specific, it’s so good that our spiritually skeptical with baggage, but open and live in Chicagoland. And so with all of those, again, it goes back to if we’re trying to reach everybody, we won’t get focused on the strategies that we need to be thinking about for the specific people that God’s placed around our church.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s good.
Amy:
What would you add?
Sean:
Yeah. Well, I think to begin to develop that kind of clarity, there are future questions that churches need to be asking. And I would encourage pastors sit down with through your leadership team and talk through these questions together. First of all, where has God actually placed our church? Grab some demographic information, get some actual data to look at and answer that question about your community. Where is it that God’s placed our church? Look at some of the age range in your community, the ethnicities that exist there. The number of kids or youth that are in your community, and really get a sense, because communities change over time. And we’ve certainly seen this through our pandemic experience. There was a lot of moving and shifting that happened, and it wasn’t unusual for us to work with a church and to go through this question together and the church to say something like, “Oh, wow. I didn’t know that. I’d actually assumed our community still looked like it used to look.”
Amy:
That’s right. Because we get to know who’s in our church, but it doesn’t mean we know who’s in our community. And so I love that suggestion. We do it obviously in our process. We get demographic information and facilitate that with a group of eight to 12 people. It’s a fantastic conversation.
Sean:
It really is.
Amy:
Because people just share and they add these little nuances that get the church to even more focused on who God’s placed around their church.
Sean:
Yeah. That’s good. The second question I would encourage them to ask is, who are we trying to reach within that mission field? And this gets to some of the specificity that you just talked through, Amy. Who is it that we’re trying to reach and we’re really trying to define an age range, a spiritual condition. A life stage, any of those factors that would help us really get focused on who we’re trying to reach. Because again, we’ve seen the churches that have that type of focus are more effective at reaching a broader cross section of their community than the churches that fling open the doors and just say, we’re here for everyone. Of course, we are here for everyone. But strategically, when we get more focused on reaching these people in our mission field, we do a better job at reaching everyone.
The third question is, what’s important to the person that we’re trying to reach? So really putting ourself in their shoes. Thinking through their eyes and their mindset, not making assumptions about what should be important to them, but really thinking through what is important to them. Because that helps us build a bridge in what we do strategically as a church to connect with those people. It’s very clear from scripture about the fact that we’re supposed to go and make disciples and baptize people, but it’s interesting to see how little time we really spend on who it is that we’re trying to reach. We jump so quickly into doing things that we’ve always done. So.
Amy:
And the nineties have called, it’s not working anymore.
Sean:
That’s right. So let’s talk about next steps. What are some practical next steps churches can take to move beyond this kind of dusty mission statement approach?
Amy:
Yeah. Just two questions I want you to ask yourself. The first one is, if we’re reaching who we hope to reach, what’s working? This goes back to something we talk about a lot, Sean, but if something’s going well, you should know what it is and why it’s going well. So which of your reach strategies are effectively reaching the people you hope to reach? The second is, if you’re not reaching who you hope to reach, what needs to change in our strategy, and we’re gonna talk about this in the weeks to come, but here’s some indications that you’re not reaching who you hope to reach, like your heart is to reach this next generation of parents, but the seats are filled with long timers. Your heart is to reach the diversity of your neighborhood. But inside the church, we all pretty much look the same.
Or our heart is to see friends, inviting friends and family, but we are not experiencing the growth that Unstuck’s been talking about with their tribe this past year. We’re really feeling stuck. So those types of things are all indicators that there’s a problem to solve, a new strategy to set, but don’t shoot in the dark First, confirm your purpose, your mission, and get clear on who your mission field is. And just to double down, Sean, on what you said, this process of getting clarity, it’s intentional. It’s not meant to be exclusive, meaning we’re gonna intentionally think through who we’re going to target with our reach strategies. But we don’t card people at the door.
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
It’s just like you said, those who have this focus, they actually reach more people both within their mission field and outside of their defined mission field when they have this level of focus. Because focus brings focus if I could just say that. We make decisions around it. We don’t just shoot in the dark, so those would be my thoughts on next steps.
Sean:
That’s good. And we encourage churches, you know, don’t be afraid to be specific about who it is that you’re trying to reach. The more specific you can be, the more focused and effective your ministry strategy can become. And I would say it even makes it easier to measure outcomes, to know is where we’re putting our time and our people and our financial resources actually leading to the right mission outcomes that we’re praying for in the future. Amy, before we wrap up today’s conversation, any final thoughts from you?
Amy:
Maybe just one last thing here. Your mission statement that is an outward-facing proclamation purpose. We’re gonna preach on it. People are gonna see it, it’s gonna be in our print, our website. Your mission field, however, I would call that more inward facing. This is something you as leaders around the strategy table need to have clarity around who you’re trying to reach. But it isn’t something that you’re gonna put on the wall. It isn’t something that you’re gonna be sharing broadly. It’s more really for the leadership of the church to have some banks on the river when it comes to making decisions on strategies.
Sean:
Absolutely. Well, if you need help clarifying your church’s mission field and answering those key questions that we talked about earlier, we’d love to discuss that more with you. There are far more effective ways to build unity and alignment on your team and in your congregation that suit this decade that we’re in now. And we can show you how to do that. So, we’d love to start a conversation. You can do that at theunstuckgroup.com/start. Next week, we’re back with episode two in our series. So until then, have a great week.
