How To Write A Christian Personal Mission Statement

Vsevolod Mikhailovich by Ilya Repin, 1886

If you Google: ‘3 Parts of a Mission Statement’, more than likely what the search will yield this:

The three parts of a mission statement are:

1.      What We Do

2.      Who We Serve

3.      Why We Do It.

In commerce, a mission statement

1.       Describes a Solution we want to sell to people that will solve a problem they are having.

2.       Identifies the segment of the consumer base we serve by providing this solution.

3.       Reminds of why we do it for e.g., because it will make their lives better in a particular way.

The Christian Personal Mission Statement 

The Christian Personal Mission Statement has all of these components. And like the commercial mission statement it is relational. However it is oriented man to God, and secondarily man to man.  The universal problem that we are solving in the Christian Personal Mission Statement is identifying how to grow closer to God by eliminating those things that separate us from Him and make our lives unmanageable.  And those things and behaviours which separate us from God, who we should be oriented towards essentially, is very particular for each person. When our relationship to God is healed, so will our relationships with our fellow man be healed.

For it to be effective our Christian Personal Mission Statement must be rooted in the Mission of the Church of Christ. This is famously represented by John 3:16.

¹⁶ For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.

What we are doing in the Church is working out our salvation. This is an essential, relationship-wise way we serve the Lord, by participating in our own healing. We participate in our salvation because we want to be healed of the brokenness within us and have a close relationship with God who we serve. God has given us everything we need, especially Himself, in order to fulfil this mission. He has given us talents and circumstances by which our character would be forged to be more likened to His own character.

A Mission statement  should ground us in this purpose, and demonstrate our assent to this purpose. This mission statement should be more about a healthy relationship with God and our fellow man than about self-actualization for the sake of self-aggrandization.    

The desire to self-aggrandize could come from our attraction to the Nephilimic heroic ideal because within our natal family dynamic we were compared unfavorably to this model, instilling in us a desire to achieve it, to prove to them that you or I were in fact capable to master this mode of being…but in reality, our broken heart sees ourselves as the unloved other, the one no one cares about or expects anything of, and this wall rises up against us every time we try on our own to heal that deep wound. And the coping skills we’ve developed sometimes sabotages us…because in a way, we are obeying the internalized voices, the projected expectations which live  in our head that tell us that in order to succeed we need to fail or hurt and dominate others.

In seeking health in Christ, we turn away from the Nephilimic icons of worldly success and domination of our environment, what John 2:16 warns us against:

¹⁶ For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

In Christ, the manner of our relationship to Him is what returns us to our whole being. Orienting ourselves to Christ restores our soul, its intellect, will and heart; so that it begins to operate as it was intended to when Christ first made Adam and Eve and instilled in us the virtues and characteristics modeled on His own being. And if we think of our planner as a way to begin to map out ways to become more like Christ, we have a better chance of succeeding in using it for the long term, consistently.

Components of a Christian Personal Mission Statement Grounded on Soteriological Principles.

A mission statement should list a stumbling block i.e., problem, that is causing you not to fulfill your potential in your daily living. For me it was sleeping a lot. This was how I coped with  vicissitudes of my life and its past. The Church gave me a structure, that was daily, and routine, that I could enter into. Morning and Evening prayers. Church on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings. Every seven days the cycle began again. The rhythmic cycle of the Church provided the framework which I entered into and it began to heal my life. Is it no wonder, that I was beginning to stay up for longer periods of my day, simply by entering into that salvific cycle, by getting up in the morning to pray, by praying before I went to sleep?

Another thing was the sacrament of confession. Every.  Saturday. Evening.

A priest administers the sacrament of confession. The Church calls confession a cleansing of the soul. You confess your weakness and struggles, receive salvific balms of advice, and if you prepared for communion, you take it on Sunday. When you go to talk to your priest after the liturgy, you can  ask him to suggest books to read that will help you in your particular struggle.

The planner is Not the Solution to The Problem

So to continue; Along with listing a problem you are trying to solve with your use of the planner, you need to come up with a solution to that problem; the planner is not the solution to the problem, it is merely a tool to help you tackle the problem; of course your priest will help you with Identifying solutions.

So sleeping a lot was a form of sloth, the opposite of diligence. I was not motivated to participate in my life due to fear of failure and the fear of success. I would start things and then stop. I didn’t develop the perseverance to continue with a thing when I came upon an obstacle or adversary. I daydreamed a lot. So the solution to that was work; not merely work that you do to pay the rent, or put food on the table.. but work that explored my talents, given me by God. I like to draw and play music. So I forced myself to practice that. I liked to garden, and I forced myself to do that, even though I had no idea what I was doing.  I used a planner to plan worktimes needed for me to engage in this interest and my hobbies. And then I forced myself to do it.  I forced myself to pray.

In this way I learned that Mission statements are one way to help you be accountable to the gifts the Lord has given you so that you can work out your salvation within them in the context of the Church.

Here are two examples of a mission statement:

1.    My mission statement-in part-today: In order to further live a Christian life, I will develop the talents and interests given me by God, and commit to a prayer rule in the mornings and the evenings. I will go to Church on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings. In this way I will participate in the salvific grace of healing in my life so that I can be reconciled to Christ and have eternal life.

So this statement begins with its why, then the actionable what and ends with a why that identifies who I serve in doing this.

2.    A part of my mission statement in 2011: I will learn and implement sound natural economic principles  and strategies grounded in the cultural values of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Faith and according to principles in Proverbs 31. 

Although this statement is broad, it allowed me to explore economic principles and strategies that work for my personality and aligned with the values of the Church. It’s what is that I will learn and implement sound natural economic principles…it implied service and allegiance to the faith and its principles (given us by God), and its why was implied by stating Proverbs 31 which speaks of a woman who ran a very sound household and who also managed fields which grew crops (I want to emulate her).

These mission statements are oriented to what I could achieve, and away from my failures. In the parlance of Peer Support Counseling, it was strengths-based while identifying the work I needed to do to recover my image in Christ.

So using these mission statements: I learnt bookkeeping skills, I worked with a financial advisor who works with the poor, and I’ve learned that I don’t want people to do my finances for me, I wanted to learn how to be functionally healthy in my own personal use of personal finance skills. This is an ongoing project of mine.

In developing my artistic inclination, I took art classes at a school I was told by my foster mother that I would never be able to attend. I know God made that possible…but man!-- was I a mess while I was attending. I was being disobedient to what I was trained to believe about myself…If Fr. Michael had not shown up on my graduation day…I probably would have committed suicide. That was how dysregulated I was. I’m not exaggerating. I felt so worthless that day….it was profoundly frightening…I felt like I didn’t belong there. I wanted to sink into the floor and slink away like the Gollum I felt myself to be, my shining ring I felt was art school.  So it is good to have people who support you in your mission to follow Christ more closely and who support you in developing your God-given talents. As you can see they can be instrumental in helping you counter bad programming.

Another thing I did was that I taught myself to sew. And created baby blankets that I sold at a craft fair. This was a major accomplishment; there is a traumatic incident in  my life around the acquisition of this skill…and the days of dysregulation I had to get through to acquire this skill was epic. But I managed to do it, Glory to God.

Change is Not Easy, mainly because we’ve become comfortable within our Dysfunction.

Change is not easy. Not intellectually, nor within our will, nor within our heart. That is why we must force ourselves. Having a mission statement reminds us of what we are doing, why we are doing it, and most importantly who we are doing it for.

Try it yourself.  Start small. Identify one overarching issue and use your mission statement to formulate how you will address it and who you will be addressing it for.

And if you don’t mind share your mission statement in the comments.