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Faith communities have found that compelling missions and visions are essential to their vitality and growth. But the process of discerning and articulating mission and vision can be a challenge. Here are resources to assist your process.
CONGREGATIONAL VITALITY : Mission and Vision
  Be Not Afraid!: Building Your Church on Faith and Knowledge (Book)
Fredric M. Roberts, Author.
Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 2005.
Be Not Afraid! offers a research-based guide to help people of faith know who they are, know what they believe, and integrate their history and beliefs into all dimensions of their life together.
Future Search: An Action Guide to Finding Common Ground in Organizations & Communities (Book)
Marvin Weisbord, Sandra Janoff, Authors.
San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2000.
Future Search describes a planning process for groups who seek to create a vision for their community, enable stakeholders to discover shared vision and take responsibility for their plans, or implement an existing shared vision.
 Vision and the Church (Web Resource)
Marie Fleming presents congregational vision as a process—shaped through seven "learning pathway" segments. Each segment includes a topical overview, a series of exercises and discussion starters, and a place to record and share insights.
 The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters (Book)
Peter Block, Author.
San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2001.
The Answer to How Is Yes compels us to attend to those ideals and commitments that truly matter—both in our individual lives and in our institutions and communities.
Better Than Success: 8 Principles of Faithful Leadership (Book)
C. Jeff Woods, Author.
Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2001.
Jeff Woods lays out the principles for faithful leadership, including the capacity to help church leaders discern God's vision and to serve as an agent of growth and change.
Borderland Churches: A Congregation's Introduction to Missional Living (Book)
Gary V. Nelson, Author.
St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2008.
In the borderlands where "Christian faith, other faiths, and unfaith intersect,"Gary Nelson calls the church to define itself as a community of God's people that organizes its life around being an agent of God's mission to the world.
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Book)
James C. Collins, Jerry I. Porras, Authors.
New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2002.
Asserting that building a visionary organization is more important than having a visionary leader, the authors note that such organizations are able to identify—and stay true to—their core values.
Discerning Your Congregation's Future: A Strategic and Spiritual Approach (Book)
Roy M. Oswald, Robert E. Friedrich Jr., Authors.
Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 1996.
Combining practical mission planning with a deeply grounded spiritual dimension, the authors have developed a "visioning" and mission development process that enables the whole congregation to understand and foster change.
A Door Set Open: Grounding Change in Mission and Hope (Book)
Peter L. Steinke, Author.
Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 2010.
Drawing on a firm knowledge of systems theory and a firm belief in the centrality of mission, Peter Steinke helps leaders understand change, the factors that sabotage it, and the value of approaching mission with faith and hope.
 Everyday Creativity, by Dewitt Jones (Media)
Distributed by Star Thrower. Duration: 20 minutes.
Dewitt Jones uses photography to show how we can access our creativity on a daily basis, how we can look at the seemingly ordinary and see the extraordinary.
The Gathered and Scattered Church: Equipping Believers for the 21st Century (Book)
Edward H. Hammett, Author.
Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishers, 1999.
Edward Hammett concludes that the church needs to recast itself in a way that focuses on equipping people to be scattered out in mission to the world.
Gathered and Sent: The Mission of Small Church Communities Today (Book)
Bernard J. Lee S.M., Michael A. Cowan, Authors.
Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2003.
The authors profess that Roman Catholic small groups should not be restricted to personal conversations. Rather, they need to engage in political and economic dialogue with other groups and in the larger cultural setting.
Grounded in God: Listening Hearts Discernment for Group Deliberations (Book)
Suzanne G. Farnham, Stephanie A. Hull, R. Taylor McLean, Authors.
Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1999.
Grounded in God provides instruction on the benefits of—and skills needed for—using discernment in group decision making.
Making the Church Work: Converting the Church for the 21st Century (Book)
Edward H. Hammett, Author.
Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys Publishers, 2000.
Churches stuck in outdated modes of leadership and focus are failing churches. This book explores the areas where the church needs to repent and adaptations it must make to grow into full relationship with Christ and fill its future mission.
The Once and Future Church: Reinventing the Congregation for a New Mission Frontier (Book)
Loren B. Mead, Author.
Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 1991.
Principles that have guided the church since the conversion of Constantine no longer apply in our turbulent world. In this classic, Mead alerts us to the challenges of reinventing the new church and offers hopeful signs of the future church’s emergence.
Who Is Our Church?: Imagining Congregational Identity (Book)
Janet Cawley, Author.
Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 2006.
This book invites congregations to use what they know about themselves to create a metaphor of the congregation as a person and then to use this metaphor to discover their hidden gifts and create a new vision and mission for themselves.
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