In organizational development, scholars often make the distinction between an organization’s vision and mission. While there are numerous ways to differentiate between the two, generally speaking, an organization’s vision is an inspirational picture of the future. It is the aspirational end state that comes from asking the question, “What if the world could be different? What if it looked like…this?”
A vision, as you might expect, is purposefully general. It can be so broad, in fact, that it can entail a number of pathways to achieve it. This is where an organizational mission comes in. A mission is a purpose statement for how one specific organization is going to fulfill a vision.
For example, imagine you live in a town where you notice that a growing number of young people in their 20’s and 30’s report lacking purpose in life. Having passed through the modern education industrial complex, they lack the thoughtfulness and tools to think about what it would be like to craft a life built on enduring values. They have been trained to think that life is about maximizing income, not living for a higher purpose.
What’s more, these young adults in your town display a noticeable lack of creativity. They do not read, build, explore, serve, or sing for fun. They have graduated college and landed decent paying jobs, but their leisure is short-circuiting as free time is routinely consumed through tech addiction passing as “catching up on shows.”
As life’s big challenges begin to set in, these young people realize they do not know what they think about complex political issues. They are left paralyzed by the suffering that comes from the illness of a loved one. They are not sure whether God is actually good and really involved in their day to day lives.
Upon noticing such a problem in your town looking out, you further observe looking in that a version of yourself shares some of these deficiencies. Meanwhile, an aspirational picture begins to emerge in your mind of a young person who lives and looks decidedly different. “What if I drove down the street and saw a young man or woman living like…this?” you ask yourself. “How would this happen?”
Thus begins your journey toward Christian, classical education and perhaps even starting a school toward this end.
In this article, I will explore how schools can strengthen their mission statements and then align their communities with this overarching purpose. The goal is that through achieving strong organizational clarity, schools in the Christian classical education renewal movement can better deliver on what they have set out to achieve and then be faithful to this work for the longterm.
Many Missions, One Vision
There are hundreds of Christian, classical schools in the United States. I recently heard that there were 140 of such schools in 2010 and now there are over 700. This is amazing progress for the movement in just 13 years. For each one of these schools, there is a distinct mission or purpose, stating why it exists. Consider this small sampling, which exemplifies the variety:
- We exist to glorify God by cultivating students of wisdom and virtue through a Christ-centered, academically robust classical education.
- We exist to assist parents in their duty of biblically training their children by offering distinctly Christ-centered and Classical academic instruction.
- We exist to glorify God by equipping students with the tools necessary to pursue a lifetime of learning so that they may discern, reason and defend truth in service to our Lord, Jesus Christ.
- We exist to inspire students with an education founded on a Christian worldview, informed by the classical tradition, and approached with diligence and joy.
- We exist to support families and churches by providing an academically excellent classical Christian education that cultivates knowledge, wisdom, eloquence, and godly character and equips students with the tools of learning that will last a lifetime.
What you may notice above is that each of these missions emphasizes a different aspect of the Christian, classical education renewal movement. Some underscore the importance of partnership between church, family, and school. Others emphasize that bringing glory to God ought to be the “why” of the mission no matter what kind of Christian organization. But what all these schools have in common if we were to press them is a shared vision about the sort of alumni they seek to develop through their programs.
The Eight-Word Mission Statement
Interestingly, in the organizational development world, there is growing interest in what has been called the “eight-word mission statement.” (or even seven words). It is exactly what it sounds like: a brief concise purpose statement that captures the “why” of an organization with stunning simplicity.
Here’s the formula: A verb, a target population, and an outcome that implies something to measure. As Kevin Starr, a though leader in social entrepreneurship, puts it,
Save kids’ lives in Uganda. Rehabilitate coral reefs in the Western Pacific. Prevent maternal-child transmission of HIV in Africa. Get Zambian farmers out of poverty. These statements tell us exactly what the organization has set out to accomplish. Once we’ve got it, we know whether they are working on something that fits our own mission, and we have a useful starting point for any subsequent conversations.
Stanford Social Innovation Review (https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_eight_word_mission_statement#)
Starr identifies two specific strengths of this approach to crafting mission statements. First, it focuses on concrete results, thereby avoiding vague language. Second, it spotlights the “what,” not the “how.”
I suspect that one reason mission statements at Christian, classical schools can arguably be too long, such as in the examples above, is that proponents of this type of education cannot help themselves but include the “how.” Notice how many of the mission statements above include the specifics of the education they offer. They are drifting into the way they will accomplish their mission, rather than focusing on the central purpose.
If we take Starr’s advice, here might be a compelling alternative: “Cultivate students of wisdom and virtue.” Now, this may feel overly general. After all, it fails to to say anything about classical or Christian education. Is this a problem? Not necessarily. If you are committed to keeping your school’s mission focused solely on the “what,” then you must resist the temptation to detail method and instead be ultra clear on the chief purpose, which for our schools is about the formation of a particular kind of student.
Readers may not fully buy into the idea of an eight-word mission statement. For one, it can feel at times like it fuses vision and mission, future state and pathway, in a way that conflicts with the traditional distinction described above. Regardless of where you land, the point is that, when crafting a mission statement, you want to achieve maximal clarity on why your school exists. The more clarity you gain, the more you can align your school community with this core focus.
Creating Missional Alignment
Once a school has its core focus articulated via a mission statement, it can be to think about how this mission is to serve as the aligning rails for all activity within the organization. In Wisdom and Eloquence (Crossway, 2006), Robert LittleJohn and Chuck Evans define alignment as “like-mindedness about the essential qualities of the school and a common understanding that everything that happens under the school’s banner is informed or required by its core mission. We often use the term ‘vertical alignment,’ or the insistence that every activity, every decision, flows figuratively downhill from the school’s mission.” (203).
Admittedly, I have been puzzled by this concept at times. It has not always been clear to me how all the various activities of the school are “informed” or “required” by its core mission. For some activities, of course, it is obvious. Logic class, for example, flows downhill from a classical mission in that logic, or dialectic, is one of the three language arts of the classical trivium. A Shakespeare performance is informed by the mission insofar as Shakespearean drama holds a major place in the annals of western literature.
But what about curriculum nights? School picnics? Admissions welcome packets? Capital campaigns? Employee benefits packages? It is not obvious that these flow downhill from a distinctively Christian classical mission. After all, these activities exist in other schools. So what is the difference?
The Aligned Community
Here it is important to underscore the distinction between “required” and “informed.” To “require” is to need for a particular purpose while to “inform” is to give shape to. Every activity at a school must either be necessary to the school’s core mission or be shaped by it. Let us consider a few examples for each of these categories.
I can think of a number of necessities, required ingredients, for a classical school to achieve its mission. The school must have a wide and varied curriculum of classical literature, art, music, and history. Additionally, it must focus its instruction on training students in the liberal arts, the complex skills of reading, thinking, speaking, calculating, and creating. And it must include in its objectives an emphasis on the character formation of its students rather than solely going for more head knowledge. These examples, we might say, exist in the center core of the mission. Take away one of these qualities and you risk achieving the purpose you have set out to accomplish.
Then there are the activities of the school that are not required by the school’s mission, but must at the very least be significantly shaped by it. Take a capital campaign, for example. Schools cost money to operate, and strategic decisions to take the school to the next level often require significant funds. To raise this capital, one must share with potential donors a compelling vision for how their gifts will advance the school’s mission. What will make up the content of this vision? Whatever is decided, the explicit connection must be made to the school’s mission of cultivating students of wisdom and virtue. Otherwise you are raising money for something else.
Let us look at another example and drill a little deeper: the girls volleyball team. How can we align this program with the school’s core mission? We begin by putting the mission in front of us: cultivating students of wisdom and virtue. We then begin thinking about what wisdom and virtue look like for student athletes in the volleyball program. Wisdom may have to do with their approach to competition on the court as followers of Christ. Or it could connect to how students interact with one another during practice. A focus on virtue could influence how much effort students put into practice each day or deciding as a team they will never give up no matter the odds.
By evaluating each program or activity in your school against the rubric of your school’s mission, you can align your entire community to this core focus. This keeps all constituents on the same page and rowing in the same direction. As LittleJohn and Evans sum it up nicely: “A vertically aligned school can be confident that each member of the community understands the school’s mission and his or her role in helping to achieve that mission” (203).
Conclusion
Schools are complex operations. They consist of many types of constituents: board members, parents, faculty and staff, students, and alumni. They are also comprised of all sorts of activities, ranging from hot lunch to curriculum development to facilities management to the actual instruction in the classroom. Consequently, keeping the school united is a crucial task and it all begins with a clear mission statement. Once this purpose statement is articulated clearly and points toward an aspirational future state, the vision, comprehensive alignment must be carried out. By taking inventory of every activity and decision at the school and determining alignment with the mission, school leaders can bring unity and direction to their communities that will spark momentum and a sense of confidence for what the future holds.
