Identifying Your Church’s Driving Question

Mark Tidsworth, Pinnacle Team Leader

Every organization, no matter what kind, is focused on answering a particular question. When observing their activities, culture, mission, language, and ethos, we recognize they are working to fill in the answers to one single driving question. Sure there are spin-offs, corollary questions they are also answering, while one question rises to the top.

When leaders in churches realize this, they are then positioned to identify their driving question. Post-identification comes an opportunity for assessment of their driving question. Then comes one of the great opportunities of church leadership – to choose and pursue their driving question.

To illustrate, let’s first consider less helpful driving questions found in many churches.

  • How can we involve more people in our programs?

  • How can we increase our budget?

  • How can we raise our worship attendance?

  • How can we involve more younger families?

  • How can we organize ourselves better?

There’s nothing wrong with these questions. They have their place. But their place is not at the head of the question line. These questions do not drive us nor compel us to rise up and join God’s movement in this world in greater ways. These questions are all about us, not about God and God’s call to be disciples who are sent into the world as we know it. To use very practical language, these questions are about lag measures….they lag behind something else; the driving question. They are indicators perhaps of spiritual realities, but not the spiritual reality themselves.

Instead, a church’s driving question looks something like this:

What’s our best expression of church in our community for this particular time?

What’s so helpful about this question? The adaptive opportunities inherent therein are great. Breaking this question down into bite-sized mouthfuls will help you do the discernment work needed to begin answering.

Our best expression of church

  • This says we are a work in progress, on a journey of being formed as a church

  • This makes room for our identity to go forward, keeping the best of who we are, our identity markers so to speak

  • This says our current expression of church is only our current expression; change and transformation are expected when we embrace this question

  • This says we are pursuing quality and excellence in all we do

  • This introduces flexibility into our paradigm for being church together

In our community

  • This says we are church in a context, not in a vacuum

  • This says we are interested in, and perhaps love, our community

  • This says we see ourselves as an integral part of our community, not an isolated religious island

  • This says we are called to embrace our community, being church in relevant ways

  • This says we are willing to give up the fantasy that we will connect with and draw people who are unlike the people in our community

For this particular time

This calls us to forsake nostalgia, wishing for yester-year when more people appreciated the Christian Movement in our community

  • This calls us to grow familiar with our community as it currently exists

  • This calls us to update our ways of being church which reflect the ways in which people communicate and interact in our community

  • This calls us to identify potential partners are in our community who are currently present

  • This calls us to address the needs in our community which are relevant at this point in time

  • This calls us to be present and future focused, rather than stuck in the past

As you can see, there are great growth opportunities for our understanding of what it means to be church inherent in this question. So, we encourage you to undertake this activity with the leadership of your church. What is our driving question? This sample provided is a good beginning place, though your church’s question may be some innovation on this sample question. Once identified, then there is a process required for moving to your church’s invigorating challenge (next week’s article).

In the meantime, may we grow so captivated by the Way of Jesus that we won’t hesitate to ask the most important questions, positioning ourselves to be the best expression of church we can be…..so far.

Helen Renew