The Main Thing: Values

Leadership Straight from Bill Hybels The Main Thing: Values I stopped 10 years ago drawing fine lines of distinction between words like vision, mission, purpose. I know some churches say "Here's our mission statement, our vision statement, our purpose statement..." I am lost already. I am 'glazed' over. It will not fit on the front of a t-shirt. No one will remember it. We have a problem. To avoid some of that nonsense what I like to say is what is the main thing that God wants your church to be or do in the next few years? Call it purpose, mission. Call it whatever. What is the main thing that God wants your church to evolve into or to become? Let's not mess with that. Now I do make a distinction when you start talking about values. Values are how are we going to behave as we head toward mission achievement? Values are behaviors. What do you hold in high regard? In some church cultures they will say as we move toward vision achievement one of our highest values is Biblical community. We are not going to allow conflict to go underground and divide us. So one of our highest values is community. Another would be excellence. Maybe another is humility. The best way to think about your values is that you do not import them, you discover them. If you cut your arm, what do you bleed? When you sit around in a circle sometime and ask what are the values in our church. Then all you do is ask what we hold dearly in our church. What do we hold dearly? Some churches will hold innovation dearly. Some churches will hold tradition dearly. Some values are current, some are aspirational. Is that clear? We are not a culture that appreciates excellence but someday excellence will be a part of our culture. Or we are not a church that innovates easily but someday we would like to become a church that innovates without a lot of drama. So you have aspirational values and actual current values. We talk about these things nonstop at Willow. Our values conversations are a lot of fun.