Mission Statements

Organizational mission statements are a more recent phenomenon – maybe the past 40ish years. Personal mission (or purpose) statements, less so. Stephen Covey challenged readers to consider developing such a statement in his best selling 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, first published in 1990. The book caused me, over a period of a couple years, to consider my personal mission, my niche in God’s kingdom, landing on this: “To know Him and make Him known.”

Why are mission statements important to a Christ-follower? Why is the exact reason! If we don’t know our why, then we will automatically focus on the whats and hows of life, which are important, but secondary. Simon Sinek reminds us of this in his TED Talk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action. So here’s a question: Did Jesus have a mission statement? Absolutely!

After his baptism and wilderness experience, Jesus was attending synagogue in his home town, as was his custom. Apparently it was his turn to read and expand on scripture that particular sabbath. He was handed the scroll containing the writings of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written…

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18-19, NIV).

Jesus sat down to explain the passage and said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Using the Isaiah passage, he rolled out his mission statement. Initially the people marveled at his teaching (“Isn’t this Joseph, the carpenter’s son?”). Ultimately, they grew angry, forcing him to leave town. Why?

It is important to understand first century cultural Judaism that had been shaped by the religious leaders (the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the teachers of law). The religious leaders made it very clear to people who were either poor, sick, blind, or prisoners that their condition was their own fault. This cause-effect focus on people’s behavior created an oppressive religious system (the Isaiah passage did mention setting the oppressed free!). They were basically told that God didn’t favor them so much.

Jesus was stating that his mission was to proclaim the good news to those oppressed by the religious system. His mission was to communicate to the oppressed that God was indeed interested in them. What better news could there be for someone who had for years been treated as an outsider!? Jesus was turning cultural Judaism upside down. After stating his mission, Jesus went about living it out.

If we read the subsequent chapters in Luke, we see Jesus, not preaching the good news, but healing and caring for the types of people listed in Isaiah. In doing so, he was proclaiming the good news. Religious teachers did not venture out of their comfortable religious world in order to minister to the religious outsiders. Jesus did. As a religious teacher, he wandered into the world of the poor, sick, blind, and oppressed. His very presence was good news to those he encountered. His very presence was a proclamation of the good news that God indeed showed favor toward them.

What’s in this for us? If we want to heed Jesus’ directive “In the same way the Father sent Me, I am now sending you” (John 20:21), there are couple things we can take from this. There’s a word that makes us shudder – evangelism. We feel like we need to be telling people about Jesus, yet live with much guilt because we don’t do that so well. Evangelism (which is derived from the Greek word, euangelion, meaning good news) is easier than we can imagine. It’s as simple as leaving the comforts of our religious world and stepping into the world of the “other,” the outsider. That we can do – we do it every day. Maybe we should call it good newsing.

This also shows us the importance of knowing our mission, the job God has entrusted us to do as workers in and for his kingdom. Jesus knew exactly what his mission was – to proclaim the good news that the kingdom had arrived and it was for everyone, even those who thought they were outside that possibility. Good newsing, indeed!