My Mission

First drafted after three days in solitude at a convent in Independence, Missouri in October 1993, my Personal Mission Statement has required only minor revisions since then. It expresses much of who I am, what I'm about. It has guided me in transitions, led me to breakthroughs, and steadied me in anxious places. It still inspires me and points to much I have yet to contribute to life.

With Nancy Stimson, Founder and volunteer
Executive Director of Freewheelin'
Community Bikes, the earn-a-bike initiative
in Indianapolis with which I volunteer.

My mission in life is to be a creative steward of the capacities, relationships, and opportunities with which I have been graced. I am confident that this stewardship is intended to contribute significantly in my generation.

I value my capacity to seek truth and bear vision amid the relationships and opportunities I am given.  In seeking truth, I am grasped by vision to transform both my world and myself.

Confident that reconciliation and hope are realities that draw us all into a brighter future, I seek, in hope, to reconcile persons to God and to one another.

I value my relationships with my gifted spouse and children.  With a sense of privilege and responsibility, I seek to impart to them my love and to nurture each toward spiritual growth.

I value my relationships with persons in community in all kinds of settings.  I seek to encourage genuine community, confident that it is a key to the transformation of relationships and institutions.

I value my opportunities, both negative and positive, for learning and creatively expressing myself.  I will seek to be a student and an effective teacher throughout my life, both as personal fulfillment and in the hope of bearing grace to others.

John Franklin Hay 
Indianapolis, Indiana, USA 
www.indybikehiker.com 
www.twitter.com/indybikehiker 
indybikehiker@gmail.com