Sunday afternoon after church, our Merger team met online and in person for our 4th session.
Beginning to discern our vision for this new unified ministry.
While we are using many of the discussion points outlined by Dirk Elliot in his book Vital Merger, in his part of the process, we went back to a resource we began using in 2018 to revision our charge, a book by Will Mancini, God Dreams. You can find a book summary HERE.
To begin, we created a list of 17 of the most significant ministries, events, or accomplishments in our churches over the years. We quickly came up with well over 20, but limited our list to 17.
Cemetery
Pecometh
Becoming a charge
Combined VBS
Community Involvement
Crisis Ministry
Food Pantry
Mission Trips
Isabelle Ministry
RH a tithing church
In Touch Ministry
Back Pack Ministry
Community Youth Group
Bible Studies/SG's
Tutoring program
Ageless Wonders
Wednesday Night Family Ministry
Online Church
Our homework for our next meeting on June 28th is to assign each of these to one of the 12 ministry templates in the book God Dreams. You can read a description of these templates HERE.
We then began a discussion where we each were asked to think about our personal sources of vision. Did our vision for our life come from an internal spark or was that spark outside ourselves. Scripture teaches us as, we see this as Nehemiah heard the reports of Jerusalem’s condition (external), which led to confessional prayer and strategic action. Abraham heard the voice of God (internal) and began a journey shrouded with mystery. We then began a discussion of how we felt our churches tended to approach vision as well.
Then I asked the group to consider their churches posture toward ministry. Were they an "initiative" church or a "responsive" church.
We could see that our churches tend to approach vision differently. What do you think about your church? Share your perspective with us.
We concluded our time planning for some homework. We were each given a copy of Section 3 from God Dreams and were asked to self score the ministry templates as they fit with our unified ministry. You are welcome to follow along and score it yourself. Let us know what you come up with. HERE.
We are meeting again on Sunday June 28th.
Pastor Gary is in the process of resourcing us an outside consultant to help guide us through this process.
Present tonight were: Carol K., Glenda D., Maria C., Andy G., Debbie B., Maryetta R., Artie K., & Pastor Gary
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