Yeah, the soccer last week was exciting, but now that I have your attention, let's talk about a different kind of goal. Cheap trick, but effective.

The various leaders have been working on goal statements for each area of ministry, and we saw the need to have an overarching goal statement. All of the statements follow the pattern of describing the Who, then the Why, then What, me finally the How. I wrote about that method earlier.

The overarching goal statement is not a "mission statement." Our mission is given to us by Christ to make disciples. It's not a "vision statement," which would lay out a specific dream to achieve. It's a "goal statement," which is just a simple expression of what we're consistently trying to achieve as the ongoing activity of a group.

We developed a longer and shorter version.

The longer version is:

God loves, equips, and commands us to serve one another to be transformed together into the image of Christ, so by imitating the ministries of Jesus, we will cultivate communities and environments for the Spirit to work in us and through us.

You can see the 4 elements:

Who: The God who loves, equips, and commands

Why: For mutual transformation into the image of Christ

What: Cultivate communities and environments for the Spirit to work

How: By imitating the ministries of Jesus

The shorter version is just to boil the big mouthful down into something a little more manageable:

Cultivating a transforming community by imitating Christ through God’s love and His equipping us to serve one another.

Our prayer is to continually be about this idea as a church, with the various ministries each pressing forward to the goals specific to their area.

(Image: Torsten Bolten, http://www.afpix.de)