Personal Purpose...
One of the best books on Youth Ministry I ever read is called "Purpose Driven Youth Ministry" by Doug Fields. I read it when I was just starting out in youth ministry and it had such an impact on my thinking behind why and how we do youth ministry that I ended up re-reading it at least once a year for the following 5 years (at least).
Anyway, about 4 years ago, I decided to try applying some of the basic principles of Purpose driven thinking to my own personal development, and as a result developed draft personal vision & mission statements, which I had pinned up on my wall for several years, but never really did a lot with them.
Until today that is...
Today @ the NYSFC weekly team training session, Kathryn Deldafield (I can almost guarantee that I spelled her name wrong) came over from Ashby YFC to talk to us about... developing a personal vision statement, which was really helpful and has caused me to re-think the whole area of designing a plan for personal development.
I'm still thinking the whole thing through at the mo, but quite excited about refining my initial thoughts on the whole area.
One point that I'd love some feedback on is the difference between a "vision" statment and a "mission" statement. I've always thought that a vision statement pretty much describes the "island" that you're hoping to get to, whereas a mission statement really helps to define "HOW" we're going to get to the island. But today's session was looking at vision statements, but angled from the "how we get there" perspective.
Is there a difference when applied to personal development thinking, or are they one and the same and I should just get on with it?
Let me know your thoughts.
And thanks Kathryn for sharing your insights into this whole area. It really was very useful.
Anyway, about 4 years ago, I decided to try applying some of the basic principles of Purpose driven thinking to my own personal development, and as a result developed draft personal vision & mission statements, which I had pinned up on my wall for several years, but never really did a lot with them.
Until today that is...
Today @ the NYSFC weekly team training session, Kathryn Deldafield (I can almost guarantee that I spelled her name wrong) came over from Ashby YFC to talk to us about... developing a personal vision statement, which was really helpful and has caused me to re-think the whole area of designing a plan for personal development.
I'm still thinking the whole thing through at the mo, but quite excited about refining my initial thoughts on the whole area.
One point that I'd love some feedback on is the difference between a "vision" statment and a "mission" statement. I've always thought that a vision statement pretty much describes the "island" that you're hoping to get to, whereas a mission statement really helps to define "HOW" we're going to get to the island. But today's session was looking at vision statements, but angled from the "how we get there" perspective.
Is there a difference when applied to personal development thinking, or are they one and the same and I should just get on with it?
Let me know your thoughts.
And thanks Kathryn for sharing your insights into this whole area. It really was very useful.
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A question - is there a danger that in trying to develop a personal mission/vision statement we are being too influenced by the 'business' understanding of vision/mission statements which are usually only about 'outputs' - should a personal statement have a more input/value/output content?
That's a good question. I guess there is a difference between corporate and personal vision and values. But in a way, the balance between personal development (input) and investing in others (output) comes as a result of knowing our personal values. So maybe in order to develop a thought through mission statement, we first need to spend far more time thinking through the questions of "What do we want our life to achieve?" and "What are the key values that we aim to base all of our decisions and actions around?".
But then, I guess you could go on breaking these things down further until you have endless lists of ideals, but nothing of any real meaty susbstance to check yourself against.
Hmm, the debate continues...