Sunday morning after church, our Merger team met to continue our conversation and discernment regarding the vision for our new unified ministry.
We continued the work of clarifying our Vision frame as explained in Will Mancini's book GOD DREAMS. (an overview is linked here)
The purpose of this preliminary work is to identify where we feel God leading us in this new unified ministry. Once we understand this, we can then begin to put together a plan for getting there, which would involve the specifics of our church "merger".
The fact is, we all like things - basically - the way they are. In order to change this, there needs to be a compelling reason for the change. A merger is such a major change and we believe that our unified vision of God's preferred future for our community will be the compelling reason. We believe God is putting before us a vision that is beyond any of our church's individual ability to grasp, we believe that God is moving in such a way to draw us together in intentional ways.
This past Sunday we talked about the qualities or marks, Mancini describes them as "measures", that we feel God leading us to recognize in our ministry and in the lives of our members. We prayerfully developed a preliminary list to include:
Understanding the marks that following Jesus produces in a person and in a church will help us shape ministries and systems for these purposes.
Marks for a disciple:
Serving in the church
Sharing Faith
Generosity
Biblical Knowledge
Loving "one another"
Prayer
Serving the community
Marks for the Church:
Multi-generational ministries
Freedom for and expectation of the Spirit's movement
All Members involved in discipleship groups
Diverse membership (economics, race, age, ability, etc.)
Ministry that leverages technology
Continually birthing and retiring ministries as needs are revealed
We are scheduling to meet every two weeks immediately after church, next will be July 26th.
Present yesterday were: Carol K., Glenda D., Andy G., Dave K., Artie K., Elizabeth G. & Pastor Gary
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