Do you have a personal mission statement? I don’t. I don’t even write New Year’s resolutions.
I ask because I’m preparing to teach the teen lesson at church tomorrow. The materials I’m studying aim to enable the students to:
- Discern the value of living by well thought-out principles.
- Develop a mission statement that reflects their core values and goals.
- Encourage others to be guided by goals that have eternal outcomes.
The second item and its associated activity caught my attention. If having a mission statement is worth my teaching, it should be worth my doing.
I understand the general principles that direct my life. They are the same principles that guide other Christian’s lives. Is it sacrilegious to say that those Christian principles are not sufficient, that they should be supplemented with a personal mission statement? I hope not. After some thought, it appears there is benefit to a personal mission statement. A personal mission statement can consider my my specific skills and interests. I need not limit my goals to what I can accomplish now. Growth is possible.
I’m not so naive to believe that possessing a personal mission statement will change my life. I’ve worked for various organizations having missions statements with limited impact on their day-to-day operations. The benefit of a mission statement is in its making, in its updating.
Update: This evening, I visited Tod Bolsinger’s blog, “It Takes a Church…,” (about which I blogged yesterday) and clicked on his book, Show Time: Living Down Hypocrisy By Living Out The Faith. On the resulting Amazon.com page was a link to Hugh Hewitt’s book, In, But Not Of: A Guide to Christian Ambition. It’s relevance to my study topic is unmistakable. I was already planning on getting Hewitt’s book, Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That’s Changing Your World. It looks like another purchase is in order.