Motivation

Motivation. Everyone is talking about motivation. My coaches were constantly trying to motivate us to work harder, play better and win more. Bosses are attempting to motivate their workers to produce more and better goods. Parents stay awake at night thinking of ways to motivate their children to do better in school. Motivation is a big deal.

There are thousands of articles written each year, and many more talks and speeches made with the express intent to motivate us. Frankly, very few of them have much impact. And most of those that succeed produce rather short term results. Like most people, I can be motived but usually for a very short span of time. Motivation wanes if it is not produced from within. We are only motived by things that really matter to us; things we really care about.

The things that motivate us; the things that drive us to do what we need to do are called our Core Values. At the church I serve we are in the process of writing our Mission Statement, our Vision Statement and our Core Values. Many people like to believe these things are not important and it is a waste of time to work on them. A more factual statement is; these things are important and foundational and they are difficult to think about. Whether we write them down or not; whether we articulate them or not; we have a mission and core values and these are the things that drive us.

Our mission is our calling in life. As a believer in God, I have a God given mission that I am living my life for and spending my time and resources in fulfilling. My vision is how I go about getting my mission accomplished. My vision gives my mission voice and hands and feet to get the job done. And my core values are the energy that empowers me to fulfill my mission. No mission – nothing happens. No vision – nothing happens. Wrong values – nothing happens. The church must have all three and faithfully be guided by them or the church will wander in the wilderness and eventually die. Scripture powerfully says it like this: “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” (Proverbs 29:18 (KJV) The New International Version says it like this: “Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint; but blessed is the one who heeds wisdom’s instruction.” Either way, it is a bad idea to try to do church well without a clear mission, vision and values. It is universally true that churches that are not motived by a God given vision are in the process of dying. We like to blame our demise on many factors but it all comes back to lack of vision.

Again, many churches have these statements. Unfortunately most of these mission and vision statements are safely filed away in a cabinet in an office somewhere on the premises or posted on a wall in the church library but consistently ignored when it comes to making the decisions that impact the ministries, mission and the future of the church. Instead of adhering to these foundational principles, we tend to just head off in whatever direction that seems right and meaningful at the moment. And we will rarely fulfill our mission and follow our vision without first taking a hard look at our values. We must ask, what do we value?

Most churches in our culture fail to move forward; fail to impact our communities; fail to fulfill their missions because the basic core value that empowers the church is summed up in the statement – I want my way. Churches expend most of their resources and energy placating unhappy members; doing what makes the present membership happy; not doing anything, (no matter if it would be something that fits the mission exactly) that might cause any discomfort or upheaval among the present membership. We spend so much time and energy making sure everyone is happy and comfortable we don’t have the resources (time, talents, money, energy) to reach out to those in our sphere of influence who do not yet know Christ. We become inward focused instead of outward focused. We are more concerned with maintaining the present membership than reaching those who don’t know God. We become self-serving. And that is not what God intended us to do and be.

Here is the difficult part of the whole deal. We need to change our core values. We need to find the motivation to change those thoughts, attitudes and ideas (values) that motivate us. Wow, how difficult is that? We must be motivated to change our motivation.

We must begin by owning our current values. This is difficult because our current values, when considered in the context of being a Christian, are often embarrassing. We must admit to being self-center and self-serving and small minded; mired in the muck insisting that having our needs met is of primary importance. But once we can own up to our immature and selfish value system we can begin to dismantle it and rebuild with a Godly value system. My counsel to the church is the same counsel I have given myself. Study the New Testament to discover what values drove Jesus to do what He did and adopt those values. This seems to make sense to me since we are called to be His disciples, follow in His footsteps and to live life as He lived life. New values do not come easily.

This is a basic, foundational change that is extremely difficult to make. It takes courage, concentration and consistent readjusting. It is my prayer we, the church, have that courage and consistency. Because if we don’t, we will surely die.

Copyright © 2013, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved