Developing Church Core Values Statements

When developing church core values statements, you will need to be clear on your apostolic mission and your prophetic vision. Without these, it’s impossible to accurately discern the culture you’ll need to intentionally create to see success. Clarity on vision and mission will allow you to identify some essential core values to fuel cultural development, which is essential for it to function as a healthy church.

 

What are core values?

In short, core values are principles that undergird, influence and clarify what a church does, and how it does it. They provide boundaries and parameters around the mission, leadership and ministry philosophy, priorities and strategy.

Core values answer the question “who are we? what defines us? what is really important to us? What are the non-negotiables?”

Core values guide our identity (who we say we are), our theology (who we say God is), and our activity (how we do what we do).

A good way to discover your values is to look at your church calendar and see what type of meetings and events are given priority, and look at your spending and consider what areas receive the most resources! Our outflow of energy and finance shows us what is truly important.

Churches can fail to distinguish between actual values and aspirational values. Aspirational values are the values we think we have, but our actual values are the reality we are living in. If you tell me you value evangelism, but there’s little activity, then it’s aspirational and not actual. It’s not wrong to have aspirational values, as long as we recognise that they are. Also, our actual values might be negative – they might actively detract from or hinder the mission or vision. These will need to be ‘unearthed’ over time if they have developed sufficiently enough into your church culture.

 

Why is a church cores value statement important?

A core values statement will help people align their thinking and acting naturally and collectively to ways that contribute towards the church vision.

 

What are the benefits of a church core values statement?

 

1. It defines key beliefs needed to develop the momentum of the mission.
2. It shows people how to live in a way that serves the success of the vision.
3. It influences overall beliefs, and therefore behaviour, in the church
4. It steers church culture development
5. It brings guidelines and principles to the church’s structural and strategic thinking.
6. It provides parameters of assessment during ministry review and evaluation.

 

What happens if a church core values statement is lacking?

An unhealthy culture will develop in the church, which means dominant values, beliefs, preferences, attitudes, practices and behaviours characterise the church that may be counter-productive to the vision, or even actively work against it.

 

How do we begin developing a church core values statement?

Clarifying and developing church value statements requires time and conversation, but the rewards and benefits are worth it! I’ve developed a resource – my Catalyse Your Culture blueprint – which will help you begin the process of developing your own church values statement. You can download it from HERE.

This post is part of a series on Healthy Principles For Church Organisational Structure. You can see links to the others posts in this series here.

 

1. What constitutes a healthy church organisational structure?
2. Be clear on the difference between mission and vision
3. Develop a mission statement
4. Develop a vision statement
5. Develop a core values statement
6. Develop a leadership structure

To find out the current health of your church in these areas, I have developed a church health assessment. You can take it by clicking here.