Mission drift, a term coined by Peter Greer and Chris Horst, describes when an entity strays from the clear and compelling mission it had at the beginning. Educational institutions, churches, charities, and ministries often start with one goal in mind and end up somewhere else altogether.
Marriages do the same.
In their book, Mission Drift: The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Charities, and Churches, Greer and Horst explained how entities that remain true to their mission have two important features: clarity and intentionality. Clarity is knowing what your mission is, and intentionality is taking concrete steps to maintain your focus on the mission. Let’s talk about that in the context of marriage and sexual intimacy.
What’s Your Mission?
What’s the point of marriage? God’s Word outlines several purposes, including:
Within marriage, sex serves all the purposes named above, as well as providing pleasure (Song of Songs 1:2, 4:10, 5:1, Proverbs 5:18–19). At least, it should.
In addition, every relationship can and should challenge us to grow and become more like Christ, including the one with our spouse.
Is There Mission Drift in Your Marital Intimacy? “Every relationship can and should challenge us to grow and become more like Christ, including the one with our spouse.” @hotholyhumorous Share on X
Those are overall purposes, though. Different marriages have different callings. Maybe it’s time to think about how these general principles apply and what goals are specific to your marriage that together create your mission.
A couple of notes here:
1. While procreation is a core purpose of marriage as an institution, not all marriages will produce children. Too often, churches intentionally or unintentionally convey that you’ve failed God in some way if your marriage does not involve childrearing. That’s not biblical. Plenty of faithful followers don’t have children of their own yet pour into their communities in beautiful, God-honoring ways.
2. If you haven’t experienced pleasure as part of the sex in your marriage, you should make that a priority. You shouldn’t have sex while it’s still uncomfortable or even painful, but rather figure out the why and/or how and move toward the delights God intended for both husband and wife.
Many experts suggest that organizations adopt a mission statement. Here are a couple of examples I wrote on the fly:
We set these foundational principles for our marriage: honesty, communication, connection, kindness, respect, and agape love. We promise to return to these principles again and again in deciding how to engage with one another and with our children.
Many things, both bad and good, compete for our attention, so we commit to praying together daily, having a date once a week and sex twice a week, and attending a Christian couples’ event once a year. While health or other events may cause us to miss these commitments from time to time, we will return to our routines as soon as possible.
And here are some quality resources for writing a marriage mission statement:
Whether you write something down or not, you should have a shared sense of what your marriage is about. That’s the clarity piece that Greer and Horst talked about needing to avoid mission drift.
What’s Your Plan?
It’s not enough to know what you want to be or do. You also need to know how you’re going to get there.
How will you and your spouse keep your marriage a priority? How will you support one another, pursue intimacy, and reflect God’s relationship with us? How does your sexual intimacy play into those aspects of your union? And how will you focus on not just sex itself but intimacy in sex so that your physical connection stays within the mission of your marriage?
Without strategies in these areas, drift will happen. Demands, distractions, fatigue, and more will keep you from connecting like you used to, want to, or never got to experience. The clarity piece—a marital mission—isn’t enough. You need intentionality; that is, a plan, commitment, and follow-through.
You also need perseverance. James 1:4 says, “Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Of course that’s not about sex! Please go read that in context. But the principle remains that maturity can only happen when we keep at it until we see the results of our efforts.
Has Your Sex Life Drifted?
In the last few years, I’ve had personal health challenges, family-of-origin issues, and much more … to the point that my most recent therapist said, “If you’re feeling like this is a lot, that’s because this is a lot.” Gee, thanks. In the midst of these struggles, it’s been difficult to prioritize intimacy with my husband.
But you’ve had a lot on your plate too, haven’t you? Because, LIFE. It’s difficult, persistent, and disruptive. Even if you’re soaking up beautiful moments with young children or making a large impact through your work or ministry, that leaves less of you to engage in sexual intimacy with your spouse—or perhaps any intimacy with your spouse.
It’s not enough to show up and say, “Hey, I’m here. Let’s have sex!” Truly great sexual intimacy comes from truly great relationship intimacy.
Is There Mission Drift in Your Marital Intimacy? “Truly great sexual intimacy comes from truly great relationship intimacy.” @hotholyhumorous Share on X
Are you off mission?
Odds are that you answered yes—at least a bit. We struggle to juggle all the roles we play in life, and we let our Lover role hit the ground. We drift.
Is it Mission Impossible?
In the original Mission Impossible series, agents would be sent a recorded messages that said, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it…” followed by the spy mission from the government. The directives were within the realm of possibility or the agents would have never achieved them. But at first, they felt impossible.
Likewise, getting your marriage’s sex life back on track may appear beyond your grasp. And even if you pull yourselves back to your mission of intimacy, will you be able to sustain it?
Let me answer that latter question with “no.” That is, we’re always fighting mission drift. Our natural tendency is to neglect what’s important in the long-term and instead attend to what’s right in front of us. Such immediate concerns might also be important, such as caring for your child or finishing a work project, but others might be distractions or choices we’ve made to take on too much. But even if you do everything right, Life happens and tugs us off course. We need to be aware of that drift, periodically check in with our spouse, and take steps to course correct.
Which brings us to the first question of how to get back on track. If you’re both willing:
- Talk with your spouse about what your marriage’s mission should be. What kind of intimacy would you like to have with your beloved?
- Acknowledge where you’ve drifted off course. What has gotten you off track? (Don’t make this a blame game. Just throw out ideas and ask for your spouse’s input.)
- Discuss what might help you have greater commitment and ability to prioritize marital intimacy, including sexual. What would motivate each of you?
- Choose one action to begin bringing your reality in line with your mission. What small step could you take in the short-term that could make a long-term difference?
- Set a time to come back together, evaluate how it went, and what adjustments you should make. In essence, how’s it going?
- Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you feel a real shift in your sexual connection.
- Feel free to repeat any of the other steps as needed!
But what if your spouse isn’t on board? In that case, do what you can, knowing that you don’t have control, but you do have influence. On your own, you could:
- Consider what you’d like your marriage mission to be. What kind of intimacy would you like to have with your beloved?
- Acknowledge where you personally have drifted off course. What has gotten you off track? (Don’t focus on your spouse’s part. Feel free to acknowledge their failures and take time to grieve them, but work on your own stuff.)
- Ask what would help you have greater commitment and ability to prioritize not only the intimacy you seek but the intimacy that would be meaningful to your spouse. What would motivate you to have a closer connection? And what might motivate your mate?
- Choose one action to begin bringing reality in line with your mission hopes. What small step could you take in the short-term that could make a long-term difference?
- After a specified time, evaluate how it’s going. Have you seen progress? Did you set your sights too high? Are you finding ways to engage your mate more? What adjustments do you need to make?
- Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you either sense a shift in your relationship or feel spent trying. But remember Galatians 6:9, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” Change can take longer than we realize. That said, doing the same thing again and again and again without a positive result could keep you from pursuing something better for your relationship and/or yourself. Check in with God and other trusted sources to help you discern what’s best.
Hopefully, you can set a mission for your marriage, pursue it with fervor, and experience the blessings of fresh intimacy!
