New Beginnings Cottage Meetings
Thoughts and Reflection
| First and foremost, I heard within the many conversations that we can and should celebrate who and whose we are. We can celebrate that so many of our members gave of their time and energy to completely engage this process as we work to both celebrate and redefine our church ministries. But we are not there yet. The completion of the Cottage Meetings brings us to the next step – a time of discernment by all of our church officers at their 2012 Leadership Retreat.
What follows are my understandings of the answers to these questions: What did we hear; what will we celebrate; what challenges will we accept all to the glory of God? Worship We celebrate our worship services. We heard that it is important for us to come together to give God thanks and praise. And yet we are wondering what bold steps we might need to take to make our worship even more worshipful as we address the concerns raised about our music. How do we best use the musical gifts we have while trying to address the very diverse understandings of what worshipful music is? |
Mission
We celebrate what we do within our church and our larger community even as we wondered what we might need to be doing in our neighborhood. We respond generously to those who come to our doors but what about those who do not? What about those that live the closest to us, especially the children? We can celebrate the 3 and 4 year old child that benefits from our Christian value-based, academically excellent pre-school but what about the elementary school or pre-teen young people in our area? How can we use our space and our people to provide after-school tutoring or physical activities for some of these young ones? How might we work with other Christian churches in our neighborhood to fulfill the perceived need? The bold step we take may be naming the actual needs and finding ministry partners to address them.
Discipleship
We celebrate our discipleship efforts both within the church (Adult Bible Studies, Lectionary Studies, Advent and Lenten worship, etc.) and within the community (Great Banquet, Men’s Bible Study, Share groups, etc.) but what about a Christian Education release time opportunity where we invite young people from within our church and our neighborhood to join us several times a month to learn the God stories and Christian values?
Hospitality, Prayer and Pastoral Care
We celebrate our care of one another (our prayer chain, the work of our deacons, our card and lamb ministries, etc.) but a bold step for us may be to re-commit ourselves to a more structured system of prayer and pastoral care through the Stephens Ministry.
Our Building
We can celebrate all that we have done to maintain and update our church. It suits our ministries well but then again we may need to take that next bold step to add showers and to consider air-conditioning parts of our building so that we can continue the ministries we are now engaged in while opening ourselves up for new and expanded ministries with marriage encounter, youth groups, sports teams, the homeless, and/or hosting IHN/Family Promise.
Yes! We recognized that we are already doing much which leaves some of us tired. We recognize that some of us are getting older and are not able to do what we have done in the past. But neither of those facts dismiss us from finding ways to answer God’s call to be a vital Body of Christ in this place at this time. The conversations as well as the assessment report have given us the opportunity to see what we need to add, to change, to let go of or to do exactly the same. We are not there yet - there will be more to come as a specific action plan grows out of the conversations we have had and will continue to have.
A special thank you goes out to our conveners, Patti Nordhoff, Joyce Koback, Fred King, Cindy Bosley-Smith and Pat Gibson who are using their leadership skills to lead us through this process. As we await the unfolding of the new beginning of yet another Advent season may we also await the unfolding of our new beginnings as a church.
Blessings, Rev. Pat
A special thank you goes out to our conveners, Patti Nordhoff, Joyce Koback, Fred King, Cindy Bosley-Smith and Pat Gibson who are using their leadership skills to lead us through this process. As we await the unfolding of the new beginning of yet another Advent season may we also await the unfolding of our new beginnings as a church.
Blessings, Rev. Pat
