A few years back our church adopted this new mission statement:

We exist to proclaim Jesus while loving and serving both God and people

We really like our church’s mission statement, and God has used it to unite, fortify, and inspire our church family.

You can find this church mission statement everywhere around our church. It is on most all of the walls. It is on our t-shirts. It is on our bulletins, flyers, and handouts. It is everywhere. To be a part of our church means that you are to be familiar with this common mission and to embrace it in your faith journey.

But it hasn’t always been this way for FBCF. Our church began in 1916, and we do not know if they had a mission statement back then. For most of the years, there has not been a church mission statement for FBC Fairdale.

So we decided to create one. Some years ago, we set out to form one. We began working together on what our church’s common mission is and should be.

We began by taking several Wednesday night services to have an open discussion. Everyone was included. (Our Wednesday night service is a casual and open prayer meeting and Bible study, so it worked well as a time to have an open discussion.) We rolled out the big white dry-erase board and took notes.

The first question I asked was – What are the things in the Bible that our most important to our church?

People started raising their hands and saying these things:

• do it all for God’s glory
• preach the Gospel
• all about Jesus
• be loving
• help people
• make disciples

As our white board began to fill up, we then realized that our mission statement is going to be too long. God’s word is a long book and there are lots of important things emphasized in it.

So then the second question I asked was – What are some guidelines we should remember about what makes a good mission statement?

People started raising their hands and saying these things:

• keep it short
• needs to simple
• needs to be understandable
• no big words
• no “churchy” religious words
• can’t be too long
• something we can all memorize
• needs to be biblical
• needs to have Jesus in it

It was at this point that many of us in the room became excited. And that many of us became aware of the godly excitement going on in the others present there too. We were a real church with a real passion serving a real purpose about our real Lord and Savior. God was doing something in us. This exercise and these 2 basic questions had served us really well. We were coming together in a like-minded faith to figure out what God was doing in and through us. It felt like a really valuable moment in the life of our church.

So then the next thing we did was to take a break. We encouraged everyone to go home with all of these thoughts, think about it, pray about it, and then lets come back together the next week. And then we could begin trying to put some sort of a statement down on paper.

The next Wednesday night, we gathered again, we got the white board back out, and we got back into our discussion. After a week to think it over, I asked ‘what are we missing?’

People started to say things like this:

• the Great Commission
• It should be evangelistic
• the Greatest Commandment
• the next Greatest Commandment

We started asking and exploring – How can we form a simple, yet memorable statement that includes all of that truth and embodies the heart for all of God’s purpose for His church. It was awesome to be in that meeting and to be processing all of this as it applies to our little church. We knew in that moment that God was working in us!

What we did next was – we began just trying to write down some of this in a single statement. I would write it down on the board and people would give helpful feedback.

People began saying likes this:

• “I like that it says that, but it is making it too long. We need to shorten it.”
• “I like that it talks about loving God, but I feel like we should also mention loving people.”
• “Our church is a hard-working church, maybe it should also mention serving.”
• “I like all of this about us and who we are, but it needs to send the message of outreach.”
• “I love that we we are working through this, but we must remember that the big goal is for people to come to know Jesus.”

And then after a lot of cutting and chopping down, we had some rough draft options written on our white board. The meeting ended. We were making good progress. We told everyone to go home again and continue to pray and think about it.

At our next Wednesday night meeting, after a few more adjustments, we finally came to a united conclusion:

We exist to proclaim Jesus while loving and serve both God and people.

It was awesome. It had been a total group effort. Our church body had created this mission statement over the course of several weeks working together. It wasn’t one individual or one pastor who came up with this. There was a big sense of joy and delight and togetherness!

That was over 10 years ago, and now it has become the center of our church culture. It is a clear mission that everyone can commit to. It is a unifying mission that all Christ-followers can embrace. It is a good mission that benefits our Fairdale community around us. It is the mission of FBC Fairdale!

We want to love God in all that we do. We want to love people in all that we do. We want to serve God in all that we do. We want to serve people in all that we do. And as we are doing that, we want to tell people about the Savior Jesus Christ. We exist for that purpose!