From Mission to Accountability
The six questions form a logic of faithfulness. Mission. Values. Practice. Strategy. Rallying cry. Accountability. Each question builds on the one before.
There is a logic to Lencioni’s six questions that becomes visible only when you walk through them in order. Tonight our Leadership Board sits with them as a sequence. I want to walk you through the same sequence, with theological depth on each one.
The shape is this. Mission gives a community its reason for existing. Values describe the character grace is forming in the people who carry the mission. What we do names the practices through which the mission becomes visible. How we will succeed names the faithful choices that shape our finite resources. What is most important right now names the season’s particular focus. Who must do what names the people responsible for each piece of the work.
Each question builds on the one before. Skip a question and the rest get fuzzy.
A Logic of Faithfulness
Read those six again, in order, and you can see the logic. Mission without values produces effective harm. We get good at doing the work, but the work damages the people doing it and the people we serve. Values without practice produces hypocrisy. We say what we believe and live differently. Practice without strategy produces exhaustion. We pour ourselves out on every good thing without discernment about which ones are ours to do. Strategy without focus produces drift. We have priorities, but they all matter all the time, which means none of them really do. Focus without ownership produces paralysis. Everyone agrees something is most important; no one is responsible for it.
Every faithful community needs all six. Most churches have only some.
The reason this matters is that most strategic planning processes in churches stop at one or two of the questions. The mission gets revised. The values get a refresh. Then the process ends, and a year later the staff and the Board are back to the same patterns of fragmentation and overload. The questions further down the list, the ones about practice, strategy, focus, and ownership, never got their full answer. The work becomes a cycle of restating beliefs without ever changing how the work actually happens.
The six questions are not a sequence to rush through. They are a sequence to live into.
Mission as the Missio Dei
Mission is the first question because it grounds everything else. Why does this particular community of faith exist in this particular place? The church does not invent its mission. It receives it. Long before any of us showed up, God was already at work in McPherson, Kansas, calling people to faith, shaping disciples, working out the redemption of the world. Our mission is to participate in what God is already doing.
That framing matters because it keeps us from confusing mission with brand. Mission is not a slogan; it is a description of God’s work that we are joining. Our mission statement at McPherson First, “to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” names that participation. The work is not ours to invent. It is ours to receive and to live.
Values as Character
Values are the second question because they shape how we carry the mission. In Wesleyan terms, values describe sanctification. The grace of God forms a particular kind of character in a particular kind of people. The values are not aspirations. They are descriptions.
When the Board affirmed “love boldly, serve joyfully, lead courageously,” we were not naming the church we wished we were. We were naming the character grace is forming in us, in fits and starts, in this season. The work is not to produce these values through effort. The work is to cooperate with the Spirit who is already producing them.
What We Do as the Work of the Body
The third question, what do we do, is the ecclesiology question. Most churches struggle here. Not because they do too little, but because they do not have plain language for what they actually do. The membership vows give a Methodist congregation a starting point. Prayers. Presence. Gifts. Service. Witness. Those are not abstractions. They describe what a functioning congregation actually does, week after week.
This is where the work moves from belief to practice. The Board will take this up in earnest in the coming months. The conversation is not about what we wish we did. It is about how we describe what we already do, in language a visitor could understand.
How We Will Succeed as Stewardship
The fourth question is about strategy as stewardship. God gives every community finite resources: time, people, money, energy, facilities. Asking how we will succeed means asking how we will steward those resources faithfully. It means having the courage to say no to good things so we can say yes to the right things.
For McPherson First, three strategic anchors emerged at the March retreat: grow engagement, build financial sustainability, facilities and long-term vision. The Board’s continuing work is to test whether those anchors are right and to define what success looks like for each. That is faithful stewardship work. Not strategic planning for its own sake; strategic planning as discernment.
What Is Most Important Right Now as Kairos
The fifth question is kairos, the discerned right time. Not every season calls for the same thing. The biblical witness is full of moments when God’s people had to focus. Rebuild the temple. Cross the Jordan. Feed the five thousand. Sometimes the most faithful thing is to set aside many good options and concentrate on one.
Our rallying cry at McPherson First is “grow engagement,” expressed in three dimensions: worship attendance, serving and volunteering, and Grace Group participation. That is a temporary, focused, qualitative commitment for this season. Not forever. For now. The Board will continue to define what “engagement” looks like in practice and to know when we are growing in it.
Who Must Do What as Calling
The sixth question is calling and accountability. The body of Christ works because every member has a role. Paul is relentless about this in 1 Corinthians 12. God gives gifts; the community functions when each member exercises theirs. Accountability in this frame is not punishment. It is the grace of clear roles, so that what one person carries another does not have to.
This is the question that is still ahead at McPherson First. Once the strategic anchors are formalized and the rallying cry dimensions are defined, the Board will turn to ownership. Who carries each piece of the work? What does success look like for each owner? That is the conversation that turns clarity into action.
What Tonight Is About
Tonight the Board takes up these six questions together. Not all at once, all the way through. Just enough to begin tracing the logic and noticing where we have answers and where we do not. By the end of August, the Board will have walked through all six. Some will be settled. Others will be in motion. None will be finished, because organizational health is never finished.
The next post lands August 5, moving from clarity to over-communication. How does clarity actually take root in a community? That is where the work gets real.
Glad you are reading along.