Mission Drift: The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities, And Churches, by Peter Greer & Chris Horst with Anna Haggard.

[Note: This book was provided free of charge by Bethany Press in exchange for an honest review.]

This book qualifies as one of those excellent books that is not necessarily directed at me [1]. The target audience of this book, with its focus on leadership behavior, being careful about hiring the right board members and dealing with donors, is the leadership of churches and parachurch charities that have a Christian focus and wish to preserve that focus among the many pressures that are faced to go along to get along in this morally corrupt world. The authors do not mince words or backpedal the difficulties faced by Christian organizations, but they do offer encouragement that there will be some people who will support companies with good quality goods and services because of their uncompromising principles. The book on this advice is of interest to all who care about the zeal and legacy of their institutions, but it is most of interest to those who lead and who are concerned about the state of the churches and organizations they serve.

The book begins by commenting on how mission drift, the slow and subtle decline of an institution from its original fervor over the course of a single generation (through the moral failings of leaders chasing dollars and biased metrics) or over the troublesome passage of leadership from one generation to another, is a crisis that all faith-based institutions must face. Having been in organizations that greatly suffered as a result of mission drift and became “mission untrue,” betraying their original ideals, it is not a fun process at all. This book looks at organizations that are mission true, giving them praise for the suspicion that they have about future generations and even themselves, and pointing out all of the ways that organizations can be unfaithful to their ideals: by acting as if one’s beliefs trump poor performance, or sacrificing ideals and principles for the sake of temporary profits and popularity, or poor personnel decisions based in the absence of a firm commitment to the visions of the organization that eventually take that organization in a different direction.

One of the best ways this book operates is by pointing out parallel case studies, a good example and a bad example, of lessons in a series of short chapters in such subjects as: two Presbyterian ministries devoted to sponsoring children, functional atheism, dying by small cuts, building safeguards against mission drift, having clarity of mission, hiring board members who help guard mission, making sure leaders set the right tone, showing how character trumps credentials, showing how donors play a major role in organizational behavior, making sure to measure the right metrics, making sure to have excellence in one’s labor as a Christian, ensuring that organizational culture is godly, avoiding pandering appeals to the world and believers, and making sure that parachurch organizations are connected to local congregations. After that comes review questions, acknowledgements, and a series of appendices focused on board memberships, board resolutions to prevent mission drift, and a charter for family giving as well as methodology for mission drift research. For those leaders who want to help preserve their organizations and inspire those who have lost zeal and lost clarity about the organizations they serve and attend. Even for someone like myself for whom this book is not strictly intended, that is reason enough to appreciate its wise counsel.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/book-review-the-blessed-church/