Churches have a mission statement; Not-For-Profits have a mission statement; even some businesses have a mission statement. Let me go on to add that individual people like you and me have a mission statement too. We all have a mission statement; we just may not recognize it as such. In his book "Remembering The Faith" Pastor Doug Brouwer recalls an email message he received from a young man from his congregation who was about to graduate from college. In the email, the graduating senior spelled out his hopes and goals for life. This is what he wrote: "To live well, to do good to others, and to be happy." (see Douglas J. Brouwer, Remembering the Faith, p. 119.)

In a manner of speaking, here is that young man's mission statement—to live well, to do good to others, to be happy. At first blush, it seems like a reasonable statement, and, probably, we'd be proud to have that young man as a member of this congregation. But Doug Brouwer is not proud; rather, he has a sense of failure—"a sense of institutional failure, that the church had let someone down; and a sense of personal failure that as minister he had let that young man down. Here's what Brouwer writes: ‘How is it possible for someone to grow up in a church like mine, go through all of the grades of our Sunday school, come in contact with all of the faithful people who are members, participate in the youth programs of the church—how is it possible to do all of that and then say, "My own security and my own happiness are two of the three most important goals in my life"? How is that possible?'