M1 Mission · Lesson 1 of 4

Lesson 1 — From Doing Church to Living the Mission

Distinguish a universal church purpose, a distinctive local mission, and a list of activities.

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Nine M curriculum version 1.0 · Nine M methodology, content, exercises and deliverables by Pastor Lee Jenkins.

Where this lesson sits

Curriculum version 1.0 · Pastor Lee Review

Module purpose: Define why the church exists, whom it is called to serve, what makes it distinctive, where it is going, and which priorities should govern decisions.

Official outcome: Mission and Strategic Identity Brief

This lesson produces: Leadership Alignment Map

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Learn

Participant study reading — approximately 75 minutes of learning and shared work.

Learning objective: Distinguish a universal church purpose, a distinctive local mission, and a list of activities.

Recommended participants: Senior pastor, executive/associate pastors, board or elder team, ministry directors

Estimated teaching time: 75 minutes

Success indicators

• Leaders can state, in one sentence each, the difference between universal purpose, local mission and activity list.
• Each leader completes all seven Mission Clarity questions independently before any group discussion.
• The group produces a Leadership Alignment Map showing where answers converge and diverge.
• Leadership names at least two current activities that do not clearly serve the stated mission.

Materials and evidence you will use

• Current mission or purpose statement (if one exists)
• Most recent ministry calendar or activity list
• Any prior strategic plan or vision document
• Individual worksheets from each participating leader
• Notes from the group discussion of divergent answers

What you should be able to produce

• Leaders can state, in one sentence each, the difference between universal purpose, local mission and activity list.
• Each leader completes all seven Mission Clarity questions independently before any group discussion.
• The group produces a Leadership Alignment Map showing where answers converge and diverge.
• Leadership names at least two current activities that do not clearly serve the stated mission.

Foundational ministry principle

Habakkuk 2:2

2 And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.

King James Version (KJV) · Public domain

This passage's instruction to 'write the vision and make it plain' is offered as a frame for why mission clarity must be written down and shared, not simply understood informally by leadership.

Note that a vision kept only in the pastor's head, however sincere, cannot be run with by others; this lesson's worksheet is one way of making the mission plain enough for the whole leadership team to run with it together.

Understand the concept

Your work in this lesson focuses on this outcome: Distinguish a universal church purpose, a distinctive local mission, and a list of activities.

A mission statement that could describe any church has not yet done its job; today's exercise exists to find the honest starting point this specific congregation is working from.

Why it matters for your church

Ministries that cannot be tied to the mission in one sentence often consume disproportionate volunteer energy and budget.

New leaders and staff who are never walked through this distinction tend to default to running whatever activities they inherited.

Unspoken disagreement about mission among leadership eventually surfaces as conflict over budget or staffing priorities.

Examine the evidence

Use Current mission or purpose statement (if one exists), Most recent ministry calendar or activity list, and Any prior strategic plan or vision document to compare your church's present practice with its stated intentions. Look for documented patterns, missing information, and differences between what people assume and what the evidence supports.

Your completed work should be supported by Individual worksheets from each participating leader, and Notes from the group discussion of divergent answers. Record uncertainty honestly so your team knows what still needs to be verified.

Prepare for the shared exercise

To surface each leader's honest, independent understanding of the church's mission before group discussion, and to document where the team currently agrees and disagrees. The Seven Mission Clarity Questions and Alignment Mapping produces the Leadership Alignment Map, which contributes to the module's principal deliverable.

Before working with your team, consider this reflection: Before the next session, write privately: if a new volunteer asked you why this church exists, what would you actually say, and does it match what the group recorded today?

Key terms

Universal purpose: The calling shared by every Christian church, regardless of location, size or tradition.
Local mission: The specific expression of the universal purpose that this particular congregation is called to live out in its context.
Activity list: The current programs and ministries a church runs, which may or may not clearly serve its stated mission.
Leadership Alignment Map: A visual or tabular record of where leaders' independent mission answers converge and diverge.

What this means for a church

• Ministries that cannot be tied to the mission in one sentence often consume disproportionate volunteer energy and budget.
• New leaders and staff who are never walked through this distinction tend to default to running whatever activities they inherited.
• Unspoken disagreement about mission among leadership eventually surfaces as conflict over budget or staffing priorities.

Common failure patterns

• Skipping the independent-answer step and moving straight to group discussion, which produces polite agreement rather than honest data.
• Adopting a mission statement copied from another church's website without adapting it to this congregation's actual context.
• Treating this as a one-time exercise rather than revisiting alignment as leadership changes over time.

Ministry case

Riverside Fellowship's Quiet Drift

Riverside Fellowship (illustrative example) had operated for eleven years with a mission statement about 'reaching people for Christ' printed on the bulletin every week. When the elder team finally sat down and answered seven independent Mission Clarity questions, five of six elders described completely different priority audiences: two named young families, one named the elderly widowed population near the church, one named unchurched neighbors within walking distance, and two gave no specific answer at all.

The resulting Leadership Alignment Map made the gap impossible to ignore. Rather than treating the divergence as a crisis, the team used it as the starting point for a focused three-month process to name a local mission specific enough to actually guide decisions, beginning with an honest look at which of their eight current ministries served which audience.

Lesson takeaway

A mission statement that could describe any church has not yet done its job; today's exercise exists to find the honest starting point this specific congregation is working from.

Discuss

Guided discussion for the leadership table.

With the Leadership Alignment Map in front of the room, shift the conversation from diagnosis to ownership: ask leaders what it would take, realistically, to close the biggest gaps the map has revealed.

Which of the seven questions produced the widest disagreement among leaders, and why do you think that is?
Name one current activity that, honestly, does not clearly serve the mission as leadership just described it.
What would change about how we run the next leadership meeting if everyone in the room agreed on the mission in writing?
Who outside this room needs to see today's results, and how should we introduce that conversation?

Discussion notes

Practice

Applied exercise — produces the Leadership Alignment Map.

Seven Mission Clarity Questions and Alignment Mapping

To surface each leader's honest, independent understanding of the church's mission before group discussion, and to document where the team currently agrees and disagrees.

Estimated time: 40 minutes

Participants: All attending leadership, working individually before group synthesis

Artifact produced: Leadership Alignment Map

Required inputs

• Current mission statement, if one exists
• Current ministry activity list
• Blank Mission Clarity worksheet per participant

Instructions

Distribute one Mission Clarity worksheet to each participant and ask them not to confer with one another yet. Complete it online
Have each leader answer all seven questions independently in writing, allowing roughly 15 minutes.
Collect or display each leader's answers to each question, one question at a time.
For each question, transcribe the range of answers onto the shared Leadership Alignment Map worksheet. Complete it online
Mark each question as 'aligned,' 'partially aligned,' or 'divergent' based on how closely answers matched.
Facilitate open discussion on each divergent question, recording the reasoning behind different answers.
Identify the two or three gaps the team agrees are most urgent to resolve before the next lesson.

Complete it online

Leadership Alignment Map

Church name: ______________________
Date: ______________________
Leaders present: ______________________

Mission Clarity question	Leader responses (summarized)	Alignment level	Notes and follow-up needed

Your response — Leadership Alignment Map

Worked example

A fully completed sample using a fictional church. This is illustrative teaching material, not any church's actual data.

Riverside Fellowship (illustrative example — not actual church data)

Riverside Fellowship's six elders completed the seven Mission Clarity questions independently during a Saturday morning session before comparing answers as a group.

Mission Clarity question	Leader responses (summarized)	Alignment level	Notes and follow-up needed
Why does this church exist?	Four elders cited discipleship broadly; two cited neighborhood outreach specifically	Partially aligned	Need to name a specific local expression, not just discipleship generally
Whom is this church called to serve?	Five different audiences named across six elders	Divergent	Highest-priority gap; feeds directly into Lesson 3 community profile
What makes our approach distinctive?	No elder could name a specific distinguishing factor	Divergent	Directly informs Lesson 2 fingerprint exercise
What would be lost if we closed?	Most named the food pantry and Sunday worship specifically	Aligned	Suggests the food pantry may be closer to the true mission than assumed
What do our current activities accomplish?	Elders agreed several ministries have unclear purpose	Aligned	Prioritize activity review in the 90-day plan
Where do we currently disagree?	Elders named audience and distinctiveness as top disagreements	Aligned on naming the disagreement itself	Confirms priority order for follow-up work
One sentence capturing our calling	Six different sentences submitted	Divergent	Cannot finalize mission statement until Lessons 2 and 3 are complete

How this leadership team reasoned

• The elder team recognized that strong agreement on 'what would be lost' pointed toward real, lived priorities even though the written mission statement did not reflect them.
• Divergence on priority audience and distinctiveness was treated as the most urgent gap because it affects nearly every other planning decision.

Decisions recorded

• Elders agreed to postpone finalizing new mission language until the community profile (Lesson 3) and fingerprint statement (Lesson 2) were complete.
• Elders assigned two members to review all eight current ministries against the honest answers surfaced today, ahead of the next session.

Completed artifact extract — Leadership Alignment Map

Leadership Alignment Map, Riverside Fellowship: of seven Mission Clarity questions, two showed strong alignment (what would be lost, current activity clarity), one showed partial alignment (why we exist), and four showed clear divergence (priority audience, distinctiveness, one-sentence mission, root disagreements). Priority gap for immediate follow-up: naming a specific priority audience and a distinctive local expression of mission.

Illustrative exercise score: 17 of 20. The map is complete across all seven questions with specific, attributable responses and a clear next step identified, though the one-sentence mission answers were not yet synthesized into a single working draft.

Score

Transparent 20-point exercise rubric: four criteria rated 0 to 5 with observable anchors.

Criterion	0 — not evident	3 — acceptable	5 — exemplary	Sample
Completeness (0–5)	Fewer than four of seven questions were answered by all leaders present.	All seven questions were answered, but some leaders left answers vague or one-word.	All seven questions were answered independently and in full detail by every leader present.	5
Use of evidence (0–5)	Answers reflect guesses with no reference to actual church history or current ministry activity.	Some answers reference real ministry activity, but reasoning is thin.	Answers consistently reference specific ministries, history or observed outcomes as evidence.	4
Alignment to the module purpose (0–5)	The exercise produced no distinction between universal purpose, local mission and activities.	The distinction was discussed but not clearly reflected in the final map.	The map clearly separates universal purpose language from local mission and named activities.	4
Actionability and ownership (0–5)	No follow-up steps or owners were identified from the divergent answers.	Follow-up steps were named but without clear owners or timing.	Specific follow-up steps, owners and timing were agreed upon for closing the most urgent gaps.	4
Worked sample total				17 / 20

Completeness: All six elders completed all seven questions independently with specific written answers.
Use of evidence: Most answers referenced specific ministries such as the food pantry, though a few remained generic.
Alignment to the module purpose: The map distinguishes universal themes from local gaps, though the local mission sentence remains unresolved.
Actionability and ownership: Two elders were assigned a specific activity review with a target of the next session, though no formal due date was set.

Lesson-exercise scores (20 points each) demonstrate learning and artifact quality. They do not automatically overwrite the official Nine M module assessment, which remains a separate 100-point rating of five module dimensions.

Submit evidence

What must be submitted for this lesson to count as complete.

Submit

• Completed Leadership Alignment Map worksheet with all seven questions transcribed and scored for alignment

Attach this evidence

Individual worksheets from each participating leader
Notes from the group discussion of divergent answers

File upload is not implemented in this prototype. Ticking a box records that the church can produce the document; it does not store a file.

Contribute to official outcome

How this lesson builds the Mission and Strategic Identity Brief.

Artifact produced: Leadership Alignment Map

Feeds directly into the Leadership Alignment Record section of the Mission and Strategic Identity Brief.

Open the module deliverable assembly

Participant reflection and notes

Before the next session, write privately: if a new volunteer asked you why this church exists, what would you actually say, and does it match what the group recorded today?

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