Basically what we're going to be doing here is I'm just going to be preparing you for exercise number one, which we're simply calling “clarifying your personal core values.” Record your response to as many of the following questions as you can. It's the general spirit of this that is most important. We shouldn't take too much time with this, but instead of complete sentences, just record your thoughts in as many or as few words as you like.

What types of ministry are you really passionate about? What makes you weep? What makes you pound the table? What that means is what are you passionate about. What are your greatest criticisms of the church today? That will often give you insight into things you value. That's what I was talking about earlier, things you don't want to see repeated. What lack of ministry focus might or would cause you to leave a church, or, frankly, has caused you to leave a church? What do you want the major ministry strengths of your new church to be? You see the overlap here with primary purposes.

What specific reputation do you want your church to have in the community? I mean this in a healthy way, where we were talking about Sinclair Ferguson's church, it's just known in the community as a church where there is strong expository preaching. It doesn't mean that the other elements aren't there, but that question, what do you want your church to be known for, meaning in a healthy way. What do you consider to be the most essential ministries of the church?

I just arbitrarily listed several of these. Review this list. Place a check mark in front of each ministry core value for which you have a strong conviction or passion. Use the answers to the questions that I just shared with you to help you make your selections. Then record any other ministry core values that come to your mind that are important to you. What are your initial personal core values 

Usually I say six to eight. Since there are five ministry purposes already, those would be five core values, you could have three more, but there actually comes a place, just in terms of the human psyche, where you're so broad that you lose all sense of definition or specificity. I just want you to do your best now recording your initial personal core values.

You can go all the way up to eight if you need to, but as five of those line up with the primary purposes: worship and prayer, learning and discipleship, fellowship, evangelism, acts of mercy, and social activity. State each value concisely, one to three words maximum. The goal is not to say any more than one, two, or three at the maximum words, like church multiplication would be two; church renewal would be two; lay ministry mobilization, that would be three.

Then write a brief descriptive phrase, an explanation of that value, next to each statement. For instance, church multiplication. What is that value? You're planting this church, and one of the core values of this church and not just you, is church multiplication. What do you mean by that? What I mean is extending the kingdom of God to all nations through starting and multiplying gospels in our churches. That's what we mean by a value of church multiplication.

Let me encourage you to begin each description like that. Look at this next example from Bob Logan. His first core value is church planting. Notice the words: “extending the Great Commission to other regions through new churches.” Care groups, only two words: experiencing the Christian life in community while making a safe place for new people. Relevant worship, two words: touching the heart of God as we celebrate his presence and listen to his voice. Lay ministry mobilization, fair, three words max: faithfully serving the Lord with our talents and spiritual gifts. Outreach: extending. You see the use of the grammar here? You shouldn't feel locked into it, but it's often helpful because it can flow so well.

What I've done here is I've taken the primary purposes that we studied last time on the left hand side, and I have just simply put the word values next to each one. Worship and prayer, values. Learning and discipleship, values. Then notice, one to three words for describing each of the values, and then a description just like Logan's.

If you were to look back at Logan's description of the core value of outreach, that's his fifth core value, outreach. He writes, "Extending God's love and hope through the message of salvation to all people that CBC," initials for the church, "can reach." In this assignment, under evangelism, what Bob would do here is he would write the word outreach, one word, and then under the description, that would be his description, and you could actually take the ones that he listed and you can see all the primary purposes in his eight.

Then if there are any other personal core values, I don't want to exclude things like, we value risk-taking, or we value beauty, or we value excellence. Those are good values. I don't want to go to the other end of the pendulum. Whereas before, almost all core values were taught in that fashion. What rings your bell? Is it excellence? Is it beauty? Is it diversity? Is it simplicity? Is it harmony? Is it creativity? Notice I've given you a list of all these different words that you could use that might actually ring a bell with you. Whereas this used to be the only way that core values were approached, I don't want to go so far as to say you couldn't include one of these. In fact, you could include up to three of these using this model.

Go ahead and write out these five to eight core values with their descriptions.