Intermediate Milestone or Ultimate Goal?

I recently heard a story about a mid-size city that was concerned about race relations between the community and police. (That could describe almost any city today.) In this case, the predominantly minority community had a high degree of distrust of the mostly white police force. This city had not experienced a tragedy like others that have been in the news recently, but there had been a number of smaller incidents and city officials wanted to reverse this trend. Their solution was to tweak the admission process for the police academy to favor applicants who lived in the city. The story concluded with a city official declaring victory because of the ethnic diversity of the newest graduating class from the academy. What intrigues me about this story is that it appears that the city’s leaders have confused an intermediate milestone with their ultimate objective. I believe that ethnic diversity on the police force is a necessary and positive step, but the city’s stated goal was to have harmonious relations between community and law enforcement. There is no evidence so far that this had occurred. This story highlights a challenge for many ministry leaders. We may be able to state our ultimate objective(s) in broad terms. But that objective is often in the distant future and may be hard to grasp. It may be a church that wants “every member to be on mission” or “our community being reached for Christ” or “all to be fully devoted followers of Jesus.” It may be a ministry that seeks to insure that “every child in the community has a mentor” or “no one goes hungry.” In these and many other cases, we need a way to measure progress toward our aspirational goals. It’s appropriate to create intermediate milestones so that we can know if we’re winning. But those milestones should be constructed carefully and should not be confused with the ultimate goal. Frequency of church attendance is a poor indicator of whether someone is a fully devote follower of Jesus. The number of people who participate in an evangelism class is, at best, a step toward reaching a community for Christ. If we lose sight of ultimate objectives, we run the risk of declaring victory too soon and followers are likely to become confused about the vision. If the citizens of that mid-size city hear too much celebration about the diversity of their police force, but the tensions don’t diminish, they will end up more discouraged and frustrated. Could the same thing happen in your church or ministry? It’s easy to receive my blogs by email. Just sign-up on Feedburner by clicking here.]]>