Purpose Driven Church Ch5 - Defining Your Purposes

Okay, so we need to be clear on the purpose. That's fine. But how do we go about that?

Rick Warren says not to rush it. The first step is to STUDY WHAT IT SAYS IN SCRIPTURE. In Saddleback, the process took six months. Warren suggests that we look through a bunch of scriptures on the topic of the Church; he has a long list on pp96 - 97. This would be a really good starting point to get the church excited about its purpose again - to give people the task of reading through these passages and seeing what God says to us!

A few pointers:
- Look at Christ's ministry on Earth (i.e. what did Jesus do while He was here, and what can we emulate?).
- Look at the images and names of the Church (e.g. the bride, a body, an army . . .).
- Look at the example of New Testament Churches (What happened in Jerusalem, Samaria, Antioch?).

The next step is to LOOK FOR ANSWERS TO THE FOUR KEY QUESTIONS. These are:
- Why does the Church exist?
- Who are we to be as a church?
- What are we to do as a church?
- How are we to do it?

Then we need to PUT YOUR FINDINGS IN WRITING. At this stage we aren't trying to be concise; we're not making the statement (that's the next step). This is just collecting information.

Finally, we SUMMARISE THE FINDINGS IN A SENTENCE. Remember it will have limited value if people can't remember it, so a 1-sentence statement is best. This will necessarily involve condensing the findings down to paragraphs, then those paragraphs down to sentences, then all of those into ONE sentence.

An effective church purpose statement must be:
* Biblical - it must express the NT doctrine of the church. We didn't invent this, we discovered it.
* Specific - A narrow mission is a clear mission. Don't cram too much into it.
* Transferrable - short enough to be remembered and passed on by everyone in the church.
* Measurable - You need to be able to evaluate whether the church is doing it or not.

Saddleback worked their purpose back to two statements by Jesus - the Greatest Commandment and the Great Commission. "A Great Commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will grow a Great Church!"

Ultimately a purpose-driven church has to be committed to fulfilling all five tasks of the church:
1) Love the Lord your God with all your heart - worship.
2) Love your neighbour as yourself - ministry
3) Go and make disciples - evangelism
4) Baptising them - fellowship
5) Teaching them to obey - discipleship.

An ideal purpose statement should include all of these in some way, but also:
- be stated in terms of results; e.g. "We communicate God's word through evangelism."
- encourage participation by every member
- be in a sequential process.

This is great. All of it is great. But it's also a bit daunting in its scope. This is going to take time to work through.