Worship. Service. Dessert.

We had a vision and mission-statement meeting at church yesterday. I hate those things, and was planning to go nap in the car, but got snookered in, thinking I was joining a brief meeting for the nominating committee.

The congregation was given this assignment by the management consultant team which is trying to help us figure out why we're not growing. I am hazarding a guess that such teams are usually made up of smart, well-meaning people who come from churches that grew because the area around them grew, or businesses that grew for similar reasons that they had little to do with. A collection of people who have experience in not screwing up growth, which is a good thing, but not necessarily the most useful for our purpose.

Of course, I should talk, right? Coming from a church that's not growing and all.

Because it was an assignment, a certain contingent of the congregation (predominantly female) wanted to complete the assignment as given. Another contingent (predominantly male) questioned whether this assignment was taking us where we wanted to go. Such a question clearly implies that the asker's answer is "No. This is going to make things worse." We broke into small groups to discuss active verbs for our mission statement, and I asked who wished to join a contrarian group. Two other men did. I should point out that we didn't agree with each other, either, and warned the group that they really didn't want to hear what our suggestions were. We couldn't have been clearer, but they encouraged us to share anyway, and dubbahdee broke down and listed some things. People found our varied suggestions irritating, which in turn irritated me. Mild unpleasantness ensued.

I can't imagine any use for a statement that begins We are a community which seeks... or any of the other formulations of that style. Mottoes strike me as things that work better, because people can remember them and apply generally to a large number of situations. Our current motto is "Where faith and life meet." I like that okay, and one of the contrarians thought we weren't likely to improve upon it. Google's motto is "Delight the Customer." That can give you considerable guidance in decision-making. Jesus said "Go into all the world and preach my gospel to every creature." A touch long, but boy that cuts through a lot of clutter, doesn't it? West Point has "Duty, Honor, Country." A motto tells you more about an organization than its painfully-wrought statements. Painfully-wrought statements need to be longer, like creeds, which try and cover the whole territory with some exactness.

I think that's the problem: mission statements are neither motto nor creed, but try to be something in-between, capturing both. Great idea, but in practice they capture neither.

I first ran across mission statements about 20-25 years ago from M. Scott Peck. Everyone at the conference oohed and aahed over the examples he gave. When human services people like a technique adopted from the business world, you can count on its being a fad.

I think the motto Worship. Service. Dessert. tells you exactly what our congregation is like, and attracts exactly the sort of people who would be edified in this community.