The faculty senate is the agent of the faculty, and its mission statement stakes the faculty's claim in the institutional decision-making process. It is in this context that the chair of the faculty senate at a large southwestern state university tasked an ad hoc committee (comprised of the authors) with writing its inaugural mission statement. The committee approached this task with the strong sense that developing a mission statement was an important step in establishing the faculty senate's role in shared university governance. In this article, the authors document the structure, process, and content of the developmental activities that led up to the acceptance of the mission statement by their faculty senate. They begin with an overview of mission statements in organizational activity. Then they review prior research, offer a theoretical framework for the creation of a mission statement, and operationalize the construct. Next, they use theory to develop a four-step, committee-driven, technology-assisted process to customize a mission statement for a faculty senate. Finally, they offer their own experiences as evidence of the viability and effectiveness of applying the four-step process. (Contains 3 figures and 2 notes.)