How does the love of Jesus drive your mission statement? The board and team that run MARKINC Ministries, a non-profit that we started after the death of our son, Mark, struggled to carefully identify our mission. We agreed that we exist to offer help and hope to hurting people. We then described the ways we will fulfill that mission.
Whenever a new opportunity comes to our attention, we push it through that grid. This process helps us invest our limited resources of staff and money in a way that has a bigger, eternal impact. When we prepared this year’s annual report and reflected on the previous year’s accomplishments, we were amazed by the broad impact of MARKINC as a result of pushing all of our tasks through our mission statement.
LIFE-GIVING ENCOURAGEMENT
A mission statement helps you prune out activities that drain energy, so that the resources you have can make a bigger impact. Finished writing your mission statement? Now start making a list of all your responsibilities and heart’s desires.
Prayerfully push them through your mission statement. Be willing to cut out anything that will not help you fulfill your mission. Push any broken places through your mission statement as well. Take note of where your responses need to be transformed from life-taking to life-giving.
Continue to pray for the Lord to give you wisdom as you pursue a life that will honor Him. And pray for us as we seek to offer help and hope to hurting people.
STORE UP MORE TREASURES
At some point in our lives, we or someone we know will go through great suffering. I encourage you to go the MARKINC website and listen to the interview "Adoption and Children with Special Needs: A Hard Calling Filled With Joy" so that you can store up treasures of encouragement for the next rainy day in your life or someone else's. Here is a summary and teaser of this resource:
Jim and Karen Weaver’s international adoption journey led them to welcoming not one, but two boys into their family, making them parents of four daughters and two sons. In this transparent interview, Jim and Karen share the highs and the lows of their journey, from how they began their adoption adventure of special needs children, to the realization that life would never go back to the normalcy of raising their four daughters. They share about the extreme emotional meltdowns that created chaos in their home but also taught them about their own hearts. Through their story, listeners will get a glimpse into the reality of the hard places of adoption and also learn how they can come alongside of adoptive families to offer support.