How to serve with passion and purpose

Oct 9, 2012 by

Josh Simmons

When I first became a youth minister, I had big dreams of changing lives and saving souls. In time however, the day-to-day grind that comes with serving in the Church had taken its toll. Somewhere along the line, I had lost my vision for ministry and was just a hamster on the spinning wheel. Sound familiar?

Through this experience, I learned the importance of casting a vision and setting goals and in the process infused passion and purpose back into our youth ministry program. The challenges and distractions in business are no different than those in youth ministry, and over the past 7 years of eCatholic, I have had to relearn this lesson over and over.

Recently, I had an opportunity to attend the EntreLeadership Performance Series - an awesome 3-day leadership conference put on by Chris LuCurto, Chris Hogan, and other members of the Dave Ramsey team. One of the lessons covered at the conference was on "Dreams, Visions, Mission Statements, and Goals." Since returning from the conference, we have been unpacking this lesson at eCatholic and applying the principles to our business.

Below are the 4 ways you can serve your Catholic parish, school, or diocese with more passion and purpose.

Step 1: When it comes to vision, begin with the end.

Ask yourself: Why do we (our parish, school, diocese, etc.) exist? What is our purpose? What is our end goal?

Unless we answer these questions, what in the world are we doing?

"If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time."

Zig Ziglar

Here are 2 tips to help you begin with the end in mind:

• Pray. What good is your vision if it's not God's vision for you? Ask God for His purpose and vision for your organization.
• Write. In one sentence, in the simplest form possible, write out the reason for your existence. (For example, a parish might write "To save souls.") Then, write out your vision. Based on your prayer and reason for existence, what is your vision? Break it into time frames–10 years, 5 years, 3 years, and 1 year. Be as specific as possible.

What are you aiming for? Why do you do what you do? Where are you going?

Step #2: Define your mission.

Who are we and what makes us unique? What is it that we do? Where are we headed?

All of these questions can be answered through a clear and concise mission statement. I know what you're thinking: Not another mission statement! But yes, we have to define our mission in order to accomplish it.

Here are 3 things that your mission statement should communicate:

• Who are we?
• What's important to us?
• What are we trying to accomplish?

Here is a sample mission statement:

"At eCatholic, we help the Catholic Church embrace technology by creating beautiful, intuitive software that improves communication, simplifies administration, and inspires innovation. We provide excellent service and user experiences to help the Church more effectively spread the Gospel and save souls."

eCatholic Mission Statement

A great mission statement should be clear, concise, and meaningful to YOU. You should be able to memorize it and it should stir you towards action. It will help not only define who and what you are, but who and what you are not.

#3 Define Your Resources

Once you've discovered your vision and mission, the next step is to define the resources available to accomplish both. Here are a few questions you will need to answer:

• Who are the people available? For example, for youth ministry, your "people resource" might be your core team or volunteers, the pastor, parents, and the teens.
• What gifts and talents do each of these people have to offer?
• What money do we have available? Do we have a fixed budget?
• How much time do we have available? What are our time limitations?
• What technology, equipment, and other property do we have?

Our resources define our capacity to accomplish our goals.

#4 Define Your Goals

Once you understand your vision, mission, and resources, it's time to set goals to live out your vision through your mission.

By setting goals, we are taking action towards accomplishing our finality. Here are 5 keys to setting goals that work (from EntreLeadership):

• Specific - Don't say "lose weight", say "Lose 10 pounds".
• Measurable - Progress towards a goal must be measurable.
• Timely - Goals should have a time frame, otherwise there is no sense of urgency.
• Yours - If someone else sets your goals, you won't be motivated to accomplish them.
• In writing - Writing down goals makes them concrete and makes you committed.

Are you serving with passion and purpose? If not, what's the point? Let's get off the hamster wheel and start changing lives and saving souls!