Taking Aim: The Value of a Mission Statement

One of the jobs of being a leader is knowing where you’re going. A clear destination makes the journey much more enjoyable for all the travelers.Defining your chapter’s vision can provide a unifying purpose to undergird all you do, as well as ensure that different leaders don’t operate with different goals or priorities for the chapter. For an InterVarsity chapter, it can be a challenge to define that destination. Many chapters use a mission statement, essentially a succinct statement of what your chapter’s central passion is for the foreseeable future (typically one to five years). We’ve identified some chapters who have defined their vision and developed a mission statement. We also asked them to tell us how they did it. (We’d like to hear about yours, too. See how to send it to us at the end of this article.) Here is what these groups had to say:

California PolytechnicTodd Minturn is on staff at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo (CA). The I-V chapter there has adopted this mission statement: "We will strive side by side, positioning ourselves to clearly show Jesus and advance the gospel throughout Cal Poly."

This was our chapter-wide mission statement developed by our leadership team (essentially our exec team along with our team of small-group coordinators—13 students in all, along with four staff). We have six measurable goals to help us accomplish our mission statement:

1. Have new believers in every small group.

2. Increase chapter’s ethnic diversity by 50 percent.

3. Retain 80 percent (in the spring) of all the people who were put onto the chapter phone list in the fall.

4. Have all leaders (including small-group leaders) committed to discipling at least one younger student in Poly Christian Fellowship.

5. See thirty different people per day attending chapter prayer.

6. Host an outward-focused chapter wide event every quarter.

The development of our mission statement was a fairly lengthy process. We began by watching the movie Apollo 13 on the first night of chapter leadership camp. Then we discussed the mission of the Apollo 13 crew, how they achieved their mission and how they handled problems that arose along the way. From this we talked about mission statements and what they are. We defined our mission statement as representing what we wanted the chapter to look like at the end of the year. We also talked about goals and defined them as measurable quantities so that when our goals are met, we know we’re accomplishing our mission.

Also during our week at camp, we completed a manuscript study in the book of Philippians. After coming to an understanding of what a mission statement is, and having finished our study of Philippians, we set out to write a mission statement for our chapter. In writing the mission statement we wanted our ideas and even our wording to come out of our Philippians study.

First, we each worked on our own to come up with a draft of a mission statement. We then gathered in four groups of three to four people and, from our individual mission statements, came up with one mission statement for each of the four groups. We then combined to form just two groups and, working with the mission statements that each of the four groups drafted, developed the next draft. Finally, our whole team came together and worked out our final draft. Incorporated in the process of writing drafts were times of listening, praying, and seeking to hear what God was communicating to us about our mission statement. After our final draft was completed, we then went on to establish the six goals to help us fulfill our mission.

Our mission statement then became our fall quarter large-group theme. Passages of Scripture were selected to explain each of the components of the mission statement, and by teaching on those our mission statement was introduced and explained to our whole chapter.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Mike Thompson is the I-V staff worker at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (NY). His students developed this mission statement: "United in Christ’s love, we devote ourselves to one another in the common pursuit of Christlikeness."

We have a five-year strategic vision that goes side-by side with our mission statement which addressed goals in these areas:

Multi-ethnicity: Does every student on campus have access to the gospel? Does every Christian have access to leadership?

Graduate/Faculty ministry: Are we reaching the whole campus?

Discipling relationships: Are we passing on what we learn or constantly starting over? (You can’t promote a five-year vision without passing it on!)

Campus witness: Do we have an obvious, yet positive presence on campus?

Concerted prayer: Are we working on our knees?

Our vision process was nothing radical. The most distinctive thing was our starting point. It seems most mission statements in evangelical circles have in them a summary of the basic gospel. We wanted something more "in-house" for our use, so we focused on what the gospel says about Christian discipleship more than conversion. From there it was a matter of reviewing our theology (or, to an extent, learning theology). This was not easy because as evangelicals we can be too focused on the "basic" gospel, in the sense that it can become cheapened if we lose an appreciation for how "not-so-basic" the grace of God is in this world.

Boston University AACF
This Asian-American Christian Fellowship mission statement was sent to us by Tom Lin, staff worker Boston University (MA): "CONTAGIOUS LOVE: That every student in this fellowship would love their friends in such radical ways that their friends would want that same love."

Our mission statement is more of a creative way to express our vision for this year. We centered our large-group talk series around "contagious love," including a series on "How to Be a Great Lover on Campus." We’ve done some crazy things like taking out the garbage in people’s rooms all over campus as an expression of servant love. Our goal is to get the whole fellowship owning the chapter vision by participating in these types of outreaches.

My advice to others writing missions statements is to ask good questions during the formation process. Also, there may be a tendency to want to say everything about your goals—that’s way too much for a mission statement. Try to encapsulate what your group is mainly about for the near future rather than list all your goals.

Emory U. IVCF and ACF
Sometimes campuses with multi-chapters will have several mission statements. This is the case at Emory University (GA). The InterVarsity leaders and the Asian Christian Fellowship leaders developed this joint vision statement at chapter camp: "We desire to bring glory to God by being a Jesus-centered, evangelizing community rooted in prayer."

During the fall semester, however, the ACF leadership felt that the needs of the chapter changed with the enormous influx of freshmen and other issues the chapter faced. Brian Chang, the staff worker for the ACF chapter at Emory, explains how a separate mission statement for their group evolved.

We wanted to refocus ourselves, and at the beginning of the second semester created another statement directly aimed at the next three and a half months.

We started by talking about basic strengths and weaknesses of the chapter. We carefully examined every aspect of our fellowship from community issues to small groups and just talked openly about where we were as a chapter. We then directed our attention to the weaknesses and tried to group them together in different categories. Some of the weaknesses we identified didn’t fit into a category, and some we set aside because they weren’t things we could fix and were solely in God’s hands. We ended up using three categories: discipleship, prayer and evangelism. With this as our focus we created the following vision statement for the semester:

"Motivated by Jesus’ love, our goal this semester is to: pray, develop accountability in small groups and large group meetings, and share the gospel with Christ as our example."

Now we are trying to implement this specific statement into everything we do. We have created accountability groups which have gotten a great response. The men’s accountability groups are quite small and committed to each other. We have only one female group, but many women are coming to it. We’re trying to encourage more group prayer beyond our normal activities, but it’s been a struggle. Recently, Jesus has become a big issue to the Asians on campus here because a leader of the Korean American Student Association accepted Christ. It’s amazing to see how many chapter members are now searching for ways to share Christ.

Kent State U.
This mission statement comes from Greg Gainer, InterVarsity staff worker at Kent State University (OH) and Youngstown State University (OH). The Kent State U. chapter wrote: "To see students who are without God and without hope become fully devoted followers of Jesus."

InterVarsity chapters in the East and West Great Lakes Regions write mission statements at chapter planning camps at the end of the school year. Leaders use a "seven step strategy" to evaluate their chapter in areas such as prayer, friendships, godly lifestyle, outreach, community, and others. Discussing strengths and weaknesses helps focus a vision for evangelism.

These leaders also wrote out goals in four areas: Prayer, Care, Share, and Lordship. "Prayer" goals included plans for weekly prayer meetings, concerts of prayer and prayer by the leadership team for the chapter and campus. "Care" goals focused on building friendships with seekers, sponsoring socials, caring for chapter members and doing servant evangelism. "Share" goals define specific ways to personally and corporately share a verbal witness to Jesus. "Lordship" goals reflect a commitment to the Lordship of Christ and biblical teaching in chapter meetings, small groups, local churches, camps, conferences and missions opportunities.

Staff worker Greg Gainer has noticed a positive change in the chapter this year. "I can see how the chapter as a whole now understands what the leadership team put together at camp last year," he says. "The mission statement is a picture of what we’d like to see God do over the next few years, rather than a description of who we are. And we’re seeing more evangelism as students find their place and use their spiritual gifts to carry out specific goals of the chapter."