“Until we can articulate who we are and why we are, and until we can do so in a way that is attractive to twenty-first century Christians, we will not be able to refound our communities. --Patricia Wittberg
In order to prioritize and align resources and attract new members, we need to articulate a clear vision about who we are, why we exist and our primary purpose for being together as a community, or we will not be able to muster the enthusiasm to sacrifice to make it real and attract new members. Drafting a new mission statement or another direction statement will not achieve these aims. We need to avoid boundary confusion about who is a member and who is not. This will entail a series of honest conversations to sort out our differences of opinion and find points of acceptance and agreement.
Any community that de-emphasizes its group focus in
favor of individual visions will have difficulty explaining how they are
different from the laity. We need to recognize
the danger of mission drift as result of the turnover of our corporate mission to
the laity in order to avoid canonical secularization. To remain relevant to
vocational prospects we need a clear corporate mission that inspires,
energizes, and compels personal sacrifice to make it a reality. Having a diverse collection of vibrant individual ministries is not enough.
If a community is to be more than a collection of individual vocations, more than an association of people who share a common set of values, then members need to learn to have honest dialogue about the corporate mission and become interdependent. Such interdependence can offer a much-needed counter-cultural witness to our world that is fragmented by competition and tribal rivalries.
Dunn, Ted, Graced Crossroads: Pathways to Deep Change & Transformation, CSS Publications, 2020, pp. 101-111
