Six Questions the Church Has Always Asked
Lencioni argues every organization must answer six questions to be healthy. The church has been asking these same questions, in different language, since its founding.
A pastor friend once told me, in passing, that everything in the Christian life comes back to three simple questions. Who is God? Who am I? What are we for? Every sermon, every prayer, every faithful conversation, sooner or later, sits down with one of those three.
I have thought about that a lot. I keep coming back to it as I read Lencioni’s argument that every organization must answer six questions to be healthy. The six questions look like business questions. They are also faith questions. They have always been faith questions.
Six Old Questions in New Language
The Board takes up Lencioni’s Discipline 2 on July 22. This is the heart of the framework. Lencioni argues that to create clarity, every organization must answer six specific questions:
Why do we exist?
How do we behave?
What do we do?
How will we succeed?
What is most important right now?
Who must do what?
Read those slowly. Notice that none of them is a new question.
Why do we exist? That is the missio Dei question. Why does this particular community of faith exist in this particular place? The church does not invent its mission. It receives it. God is already at work, and the church exists to participate in that work.
How do we behave? That is the sanctification question. Wesley called it “going on to perfection.” What is the character that grace is forming in us? Values, in this frame, are not aspirations. They are descriptions of who God is shaping us to become.
What do we do? That is the ecclesiology question. What are the actual practices of the body of Christ when we gather and when we scatter? In our tradition, the membership vows give us a starting point: prayers, presence, gifts, service, witness. Those are not metaphors. They are descriptions of what a functioning congregation actually does.
How will we succeed? That is the stewardship and discernment question. God gives every community finite resources, time, people, money, energy, facilities, and asks us to steward them faithfully. Strategy is an act of faith. It is the willingness to say no to good things so the right things can flourish.
What is most important right now? That is the kairos question. Discerning the right time for God’s particular work. The biblical witness is full of moments when God’s people had to focus: rebuild the temple, cross the Jordan, feed the five thousand. Not every season calls for the same thing.
Who must do what? That is the calling and gifts question. The body of Christ works because every member has a role. Paul is relentless about this. God gives gifts, and the community functions when each person exercises theirs.
Six questions. Every one of them, in a different vocabulary, has been at the center of faithful community for thousands of years.
Joshua at Shechem
If you want a biblical case where all six show up at once, look at Joshua 24.
Joshua gathers all the tribes of Israel at Shechem. The settlement of the land is mostly complete. The wilderness is behind them. Joshua is at the end of his life. He stands the people in front of the Ark of the Covenant and walks them through their whole story. From Abraham to Egypt to wilderness to this land. Then he says, “Choose today whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15, CEB).
That is the moment of covenant renewal. It is also a moment of organizational health work. Joshua makes the people answer who they are (the people God has rescued), how they will behave (in faithfulness, not in idolatry), what they do (worship the Lord), how they will succeed (by remembering their story), what is most important now (the choice in front of them), and who must do what (every household, named, including Joshua’s own). All six questions, implicit in one chapter.
The same pattern repeats throughout scripture. Nehemiah and Ezra rebuilding after exile. Pentecost forming a new community out of strangers. Every time God’s people have had to ask “who are we and what is God calling us to do,” they have been answering organizational questions in faithful language.
The questions are old. The framework is new. Both are useful.
Where McPherson First Is on the Journey
Two of the six questions are settled at McPherson First. On April 22, 2026, our Leadership Board affirmed by unanimous voice vote that our mission is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world (Q1) and that our values are to love boldly, serve joyfully, and lead courageously (Q2).
Q3 through Q6 are still in front of us. Over the next several months, the Board will work them through, one question at a time, with this book as a shared text and scripture as the deeper ground. Some of those answers will surface quickly. Others will take longer. Some will need revisiting.
I share that progress not because the answers are remarkable. I share it because the work is real. Most churches I know carry partial answers to one or two of these questions. Few have walked all six all the way through. The work is harder than it looks, and it is worth doing.
A Question to Sit With
Between now and July 22, here is the question I want to leave with you.
Which of the six questions is most alive in your own community right now? Not which one is most clearly answered. Which one is most pressing, most unresolved, most begging for honest engagement?
If you do not know yet, that is a useful starting place. Sit with it. Pray with it. Watch what surfaces.
The next post lands July 22, day-of-meeting, going deeper into how the six questions form a logic of faithfulness. Mission to values to practice to strategy to focus to assignment. Each one builds on the one before. Skip any of them, and the others get fuzzy.
Glad you are reading along.