Proper 25 Sermon - Mission Statements

1 Thessalonians 2.1-8 Matthew 22.34-46
Sermon Text For Sunday

It has become commonplace for people or companies to forge a mission statement. Some of these can be rushed or full of waffle and maybe reflect that people were not ready to formulate their thoughts. A bad mission statement uses lots of words to say nothing in particular. It is a tick box exercises. A good mission statement however reflects some of the dynamism, excellence and focus of the stakeholders.

I think it was Jaguar (I maybe wrong here) that had the mission statement printed on the uniforms of all employees. It simply read ‘Kill Ferrari’. No one was in any doubt about what the company was trying to do.

I fear that in these challenging times the churches need to consider what their primary purpose is about. This is because over the centuries parish churches have built up such a large role in the community that we are in danger of losing focus and not remaining true to our primary role. It is the downside of doing a lot of good. This does not necessarily mean we have to create a mission statement. This can be useful from time to time but there is a danger that we create a mission statement and then file it. A mission statement has to be something engraved on the heart of every one involved otherwise it is fairly pointless. I suspect that many of the best mission statements are written when an organisation is on its knees. It is at this critical juncture that minds are sharpened and there is a hunger for change.

For the pious Jew Shema Yisrael is a mission statement par excellence, the greatest commandment. ‘Hear O Israel the Lord your God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with your mind.’ (Deuteronomy 6:4)

The practicalities of engraving this mission statement in your heart are given in the verses afterwards in Deuteronomy.

“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

Importantly Jesus adds to this a quote from Leviticus 19:18 ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ and says that ‘On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets’.

A few years back a clergy friend of mine gave one of the most inspiring talks I have ever heard on mission at a local clergy conference. It was not a pulpit rant or some quasi-bit of management-speak but a clear mandate for us to change. It was given from a shy Anglo-Catholic priest with a great vision. In that hotel conference room the scales dropped off my eyes and I can still quote chunks of it off the top of my head. Privately I wept afterwards because I realised that for years I had been going down the wrong track. The address was entitled ‘Have We Got the Map Upside Down?’ His observation is that what most traditional churches feel comfortable doing in terms of mission is just making themselves a little bit more user-friendly. If we can tweak this or fiddle with that then the general populace will come back to church in their droves. In Scotland we even bought into an American programme which argued that each parish church’s first step in mission was ask ‘How Can We Make Our Church More User-Friendly?’ We invested years in this.

The question we should have been asking is ‘Why Do We Things We Do?’ or more bluntly ‘Why Are We Here?’ But let us not get disheartened because it seems as most of the apostolic leadership got it wrong with the exception of Peter and Paul. If the apostles had got their way Christianity would have remained a sect for those who like that sort of thing.

Let me give you a sense of where my friend is coming from. The problem with the Scottish Episcopal Church is that it is very small – roughly 0.6% of the population attend. The pond in which it can fish will remain very small if it thinks that all it had to do was make it self more user-friendly. Its liturgical heritage is quite conservative and I think that the likelihood that there is an additional 0.5% of people interested is unlikely.

The mandate from Christ at the end of Matthew’s Gospel is quite clear. ‘Go out and baptise the nations in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’ Likewise loving God will our all being and doing the same for our neighbour is fairly fundamental. These are not suggestions from the Lord or nice ideas but commands. They relate the essence of our faith.

Imagine if our mission statement was we aim to baptise adults as our primary purpose. If this was the yardstick to which we put all our resources how would we fare? It helps to be user-friendly and this can be a good thing to do. People wont return or come unless we know why we are here. At the heart of this understanding that we are called to be disciples, followers of Jesus, others will follow.

Shema Yisrael - wear it - live it.