During July and August, I sent out a notice to all committees that they would have the opportunity to nominate an individual for a leadership group I was putting together. Last night, I had the chance to sit down with this newly-formed “leadership team” to discuss the purpose of the group and some forward-thinking ideas for the church.
Part of this discussion involved the scope and responsibilities for the group. The term “leadership team” was decided to be even a little bit misleading. In reality, it is a Study Group centered around the topic of church leadership. So, while several alternative names were suggested (“Leadership Study” and “Ed’s Commandos” being two of my favorites), we didn’t settle on a new name. Instead, we wanted to make sure that the content and discussion of this group was transparent. As such, I want to do two things in this blog post.
First, I want to make sure that anyone with interest in the leadership strategy, vision, or pastoral ministry of First Baptist Church knows that they are invited to participate in these Leadership Team meetings. This is not an executive committee, it’s simply a place to discuss the bigger-picture spiritual direction of the church. Meetings will be held every fourth Tuesday of the month. Our next meeting is currently scheduled for November 23rd, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. We will be discussing a book called Radical Together by David Platt. Let me know if you need help finding or purchasing this book prior to the meeting.
Second, we decided it would be wise to publish a summary of these meetings for members of the church to see. We will not necessarily be taking detailed minutes (again, this isn’t a committee), but the broad discussion and content of the meeting will be shared in blog posts like this on a monthly basis. What follows is a summary of last night’s meeting.
On Tuesday October 26th, 2021, the FBC Mannington Leadership Team held our first meeting to discuss the scope and purpose of the Leadership Team, and to hold a sounding discussion about the Church’s Vision. I provided the team with a document which you can download by clicking here. This document outlined a definition of Church Vision and a process for finding this Vision.
We started by identifying the values of our congregation. We asked the question multiple ways and began to notice some patterns emerging in the values held by the church. We Summarized the values of the church into these three core values:
- The Teaching of the Gospel – with an abundance of both current and former educators, there is both skill and passion for education within our congregation. Our church wants to educate its children, teenagers, and adults to know the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to live it out.
- Community Support – FBC Mannington has long been a community-centered church. Our outward mission to the community is focused on meeting needs through financial and volunteer giving. We support our community both inside and outside the church walls with whatever resources God has given us.
- Family Discipleship – First Baptist Church has a longstanding history as a family church. We value the inclusion of grandparents, parents, and children in our worship and our ministry. We encourage familial relationships across our membership, and we support one another like family, regardless of our heritage.
From this list we derived a Mission Statement for the church, based upon the command of the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20:
The mission of First Baptist Church of Mannington West Virginia is to fulfill the commission of our Lord Jesus Christ by teaching the gospel to all who hear, supporting our community with all our resources, and discipling families across all age groups.
We then discussed the Vision of the Church. I highly recommend you read the reference document mentioned before to help understand the context for this vision. Vision is, in summary, the forward-thinking outcome of the mission statement. Said another way, the Vision is what we hope our church will become as we act on our Mission. Here’s what we came up with – notice that the mission statement says “this is what we do” but the vision statement says “this is who we are/will be”:
First Baptist Church of Mannington is a place where believers can grow up in knowledge of the gospel, grow out into our community, and grow together as a multigenerational family.
Or, simplified:
Growing Up, Growing Out, Growing Together
We closed with prayer after agreeing to publish these statements in this post. Discussion around these will be open and ongoing through the first of the year. The goal with this vision and mission is to have a published, official vision and goal for the church’s ministries going forward. This vision is something which (hopefully) every ministry of the church can work towards.
Because this vision is founded upon the values our church already has, we think that it actually already represents the vision of the church. That was our goal, anyway – to determine and define the vision for the church’s ministries based upon what our ministries value, what we are equipped to do, and what “success” looks like in our ministry going forward. If you feel that this vision does not represent FBC Mannington in some way, or if you feel it is lacking something, please leave us your feedback! You can email contact@fbcmannington.org (Put “Vision” in the subject line so we can look for it!), comment on this post, or contact me directly if you have any thoughts.
We will host some discussion about this vision prior to our next quarterly business meeting (Currently scheduled for January 5th, 2022) before adopting it in the coming months. I also hope to do a sermon series on our core values and vision at some point in the coming months. So, stay tuned as we continue to discuss and form the vision for our church as we grow into 2022 and beyond. My prayer is that we will be unified as a body in the ministry of our Lord. I hope this vision does exactly that.
Please do not hesitate to reach out with any questions or stop by my office hours. Thank you and God Bless!
– Pastor Ethan
FBC Mannington 