the making of a mission statement
(part three)
((moving forward))

if you missed the first two parts of my mission statement series, you can find "holy purpose" here and "unconditional love" here.

today, we are talking about what may end up being the most difficult part of our mission statement. moving forward/making disciples.

the quote contained in this portion of the acrostic is one i have appreciated for quite some time. "it is never too late to be who you might have been." there is a lot of hope in this statement.

if there was any one thing the long range planning committee hoped to achieve during the authoring of both the vision and the mission statements, i believe we wanted to inspire hope.

huffman's history is over 140 years long, and we have written many different chapters to our narrative. i often think back on and of the brand new beginnings of our church in a brand new community long ago. what might that have been like? flash forward to a church well over a hundred years old, well past the lifespan of a typical community of faith. it would be easy to look back on our church's past, see that it was good, see all the positive impacts, all of the changed lives, and call it a day. no would blame us. no one would have reason to hang their head. 140 plus years of relationship building, faith building. quite frankly, it's pretty amazing to dream about.

there is danger in too much looking back, though. we get too caught up in where we've been and how "big" we used to be and how many members we used to have and how much influence we carried in our conference. contrast that to where we are now, after having a decade's worth of drama, tumult, and decline, it's easy to feel like our best years are well behind us. and as those thoughts creep in, action becomes hard.

we have tended to find comfort over the last several years not so much in the great commission as much as we have taking care of each other. especially those of us that love the church enough to have stuck around through all the pastor changes and upheaval. there's been an element of pride to sticking around, an element of going down with the ship, an element of you can take my church away from me when you rip it from my cold, dead hands.

that type of fierce loyalty, there's something to that, man. it's something to be proud of. it's something worth celebrating, because, after all, it would be easier to go somewhere else. to move out and to a congregation where no one knows the humc colored baggage you bring with you. where you can blend in with the crowd for a bit. where you can get caught in the football stadium type traffic of a megachurch. where you can pretend you weren't part of the problems you left behind.

it's hard work transitioning from one paradigm to another. it's hard work to move forward.

but we are going to move forward. because we have to.

through much prayer, determination, many surveys, small group discussions, and focus, we have come to a tipping point. we believe that we are in huffman for a reason. and we believe that reason is not to die or not to merely cast a shadow of the church we once were, but to start over.

to reboot.

we have streamlined our staff. we have put emphasis on programming. we have hired two people that have no humc colored baggage, just fresh, experienced perspective and relationships they believe in. we have pledged to use the resources we still have and start changing lives again. we have pledged to be a church of action. a church that is dynamic and alive and full of holy piss and vinegar. we will continue to be stubborn, but stubborn towards the next life we can touch and the next goal we can achieve.

we are going to be a church that is moving forward.

and it will be beautiful.

because it is going to happen.