This Saturday, March 21 is Grace Fellowship’s 16th Birthday. A few weeks ago I began talking about things I wish I’d known sixteen years ago before planting a church. The first one I named was the value of in-depth training. In this post I want to highlight another point that would have made a real difference.
I wish I’d known about “mission drift.”
I don’t know who first coined the phrase. But mission drift, for me, is that powerful tendency for churches to lose focus, to get priorities out of line, and to start doing things that contribute little, if anything, to the key mission. That is mission drift. You know it’s happened when people are very busy with “church activities” but with increasingly fewer Kingdom results.
How does it happen? I think it happens when we fail to run everything, and I mean everything, through the grueling filter that asks mission and purpose questions. “Will this cool new idea, whatever its upsides, detract from our main purpose and our reason for existing? At the end of the day, will it really help us make more and better disciples, or will it simply serve to keep saints busy with activity that sounds good but is not delivering the goods?”
Why didn’t someone beat me over the head and solemnly swear to me how important this is?
I’ve let some mission drift occur.
Don’t get me wrong. God’s blessing on Grace Fellowship is obvious and significant. Hundreds of lives have been positively and eternally changed. I could go on for literally hours explaining God’s impact through this congregation. Praise God.
But still, it has happened. We don’t have the sharp, 20-20 vision of the early days.
What should we do? Let’s get it back! As for me, I’m asking the hard questions again; filtering everything through that Spartan filter of mission and purpose. As we keep doing this, the most important things will become clearer and clearer.
Insight for the Journey 
Congratulations on the anniversary of the church, Pastor Rex. I’m amazed how God has grown it up in sixteen short years. I’ve only been here for about 2 years, and for me it just gets better and better.What an honor for Him to entrust this job to you!
I found this post to be encouraging and I know that what you’re saying is true. The Lord keeps bringing me back to the basics…doing all we can to lead others into a personal relationship with Our Savior. He’s also been impressing on me, more than ever, the need for both individual and corporate prayer. With all my heart I believe this is how we will see His hand at work and lives changed. I sense an urgency like never before. Long ago He told me souls coming to Him is where the “rubber meets the road”.
Once again I thank you for your faithfulness to Him, and to us.
Rex Keener – this is not the Rex Keener who worked at the Billy Graham crusade in Tallahassee, FL back in 1986 is it? If it is you stayed at my house then.