Creating Your Why: Building a Better Foundation for Your Local and Global Missions Partnerships

As a child growing up, I would always ask my parent’s many questions.  Most times, those questions were general questions that they had an answer.  Questions revolving around the current time, the length of time it takes to get to my grandparent’s house, or the most popular, was in reference to the length of time until the next meal! 

If we have met, you will know that I like my food.  As I travel to churches to teach, I often research the best known dives and diners to scope out along the way. 

Enough about my scared past from the lack of snack time options, let’s talk about a question that would stop most parents and adults in their tracks. 
There is one fundamental question that has the ability to render most individuals speechless if they haven’t completed their homework. 

The question is…”Why?” 

The power that this simple word, when used as a sentence, is astounding.

Now, you find yourself leading a missions team, or setting the vision for how your church will impact your community and someone politely raises their hand to signal they would like to speak.  Out from their mouth is the one word some fear, Why?

Why do we support these missionaries? Why do we give more money to this mission versus this one? Why are we not doing more in our local community?

One of the parts of building your decision making funnel, as we talked about last time, is to create a Core Convictions and Core Focus document for your church or missions team.  In essence, these two documents formulate your “Why” and “Who”.

As Merriam Webster states, a conviction is “a strong persuasion or belief”.  This strong belief is your why.  Why do we do missions?  Because there are still 3 Billion people that have never heard the name of Jesus. 

A well thought out and balanced list of convictions from your church or missions team will serve as the answer to the question that all church and missions teams receive.  Core Convictions can not be drawn up in a day and will take time, prayer, and studying scripture in order to have a document that will serve as the foundation as to why your church does missions the way it does. 

Now that we have a firm grasp as to why we choose to serve our community and world, we need to figure out where and who.  Having a strong belief, as to why your church needs to be involved in missions, is a huge win in and of itself.  Having a focused location, people group or need will take the impact of your mission to another level.

  
Creating a Core Focus document will allow your team to clarify and focus your missions efforts toward the passions that God has placed in the hearts of your people.  Has God gifted your missions team with a specific burden or passion to be missional locally or globally?  If so, that is the beginning of a perfect Core Focus.

 
One church that I currently coach has a Core Focus that was born out of James 1:27, specifically the orphans.  Their Core Focus is labelled simply as the “Marginalized” as is directed in the James passage.  From that, they were able to focus on impacting the local foster care system to provide new foster homes, clothing and supplies.

On top of this, the church was able to aid in creating a community festival that celebrates all of the children that have been reunited with their biological families that year.  Without the clarity of their Core Convictions and Core Focus, they may have never been able to impact their community to that level. 

Core Convictions and Core Focus take time and energy to prepare.  I firmly believe that if each church were able to take time to pray and create these tools, our local and global impact for the Gospel would skyrocket! 

Let’s start working on your Core Convictions and Core Focuses together.  Click HERE and fill out the dialogue box, I’m happy to help in any way I can to elevate your local and global impact!