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As we’ve discussed, a map is both conceptual and spatial. It tells at least as much about how people see the world at any given time as it does about the reality of towns and cities or roads and the rivers they cross. People serving churches and religious organizations carry certain maps of the world in their heads as much as anyone else does, and these maps subtly guide the way we approach and practice our ministries.

For example, Elizabeth led members of a church communications committee through a workshop exploring the challenge of engaging people shaped by digital culture. They began by thinking about the mappa mundi within which their church tended to operate.

They noticed that, although their belief and the church’s mission put Christian witness at the center of their world, in fact, the challenge of keeping up the building was really, as one group member said, “our Jerusalem.” Everything revolved around dealing with the physical property, which hardly allowed them to reach out to those outside the church without a fairly transparent agenda to snag them as pledging members. Moreover, it meant that boundaries between the church and other community organizations were fairly inflexible, as few in the committee had time to take up work that might turn them away from member-seeking and fund-raising. However much they claimed to want to engage young adults and encourage greater diversity in their community, they had mapped their world in such a way as to set such people far beyond their borders, in mysterious, unexplored lands where creatures with which they could not imagine contending might roam.

Working together to sketch their map of the world helped them to see their reality more clearly. It also gave them the opportunity to identify places where they might build bridges, crack a window open a bit, or invite new kinds of networked, relational engagement. Of course, this did not just apply to digital ministry, but extended into their local ministry practice as well.

The first step, in both locales, is having a clearer sense of your own mappa mundi as it shapes ministry practice. From there, you can move on to consider who lives within your world and with whom you might like to connect and what borders you would need to cross. Use the guidelines below to develop a mappa mundi for your community, then go on to develop a fuller profile of yourself and your community members.