What does the Lord require of you but to do justice,
and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
-Micah 6:8
1. Offer Prayer
O Faithful God,
We ask you to guide us in our time of challenge and change transition. We need your wisdom, that we might be receptive to change, and open to conversion and growth. We need your grace to redirect our hearts so we may be willing to offer ourselves in joyful service. Do not allow fear, ignorance or pride to limit the work of your Spirit. Amen.
Source: https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/galleries/7-prayers-for-those-in-transition.aspx
We ask you to guide us in our time of challenge and change transition. We need your wisdom, that we might be receptive to change, and open to conversion and growth. We need your grace to redirect our hearts so we may be willing to offer ourselves in joyful service. Do not allow fear, ignorance or pride to limit the work of your Spirit. Amen.
Source: https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/christianity/galleries/7-prayers-for-those-in-transition.aspx
2. Read Part of a Blog Entry: Who Owns A Congregation?
Who is the owner of a congregation? .... Not the members. Not the board. Not the clergy or the bishop or the staff. All these leaders are fiduciaries, whose duty is to serve the owner. Symbolically, we might say God or Jesus is the owner, and that might be a correct interpretation. But God is too big a concept to guide decision making helpfully. The specific “owner” that the [congregation] must serve is this congregation’s mission, the small piece of God’s will that belongs to it. Or to put it differently, the congregation’s job is to find the mission it belongs to—the real owner for whose benefit the leaders hold and deploy resources.
The primary measure of a [congregation's] success is not the balance in the bank, the shortness of board meetings, or the happiness of congregants. A congregation’s “bottom line” is the degree to which its mission is achieved. The mission, like stockholders in a business, has the moral right to control the congregation’s actions and to benefit from them. Because the match between a congregation’s mission and a corporation’s stockholders is so close, it seems to me helpful to say that the owner of a congregation is its mission.
An interesting corollary of this line of thought is that when members of the congregation vote, they, too, vote as fiduciaries for the mission. Like the board, each member has a duty to make sure the congregation serves its mission—to vote as a fiduciary for the owner—even if that goes against the member’s preferences or wishes. When a member’s private interests are in conflict with the congregation’s mission, the member’s duty is to vote the mission.
And what is the mission? The great management consultant Peter Drucker wrote that the core product of all social-sector organizations is “a changed human being.” A congregation’s mission is its unique answer to the question, “Whose lives do we intend to change and in what way?” What this means for a particular congregation at a given time is never clear or obvious, and so articulating mission is a continuing task. But a congregation that avoids that task—that simply seeks to please its members or keep doing what it has done in the past—falls short of its true purpose. Growth, expanding budgets, buildings, and such trappings of success matter only if they reflect positive transformation in the lives of people.
By Dan Hotchkiss
The primary measure of a [congregation's] success is not the balance in the bank, the shortness of board meetings, or the happiness of congregants. A congregation’s “bottom line” is the degree to which its mission is achieved. The mission, like stockholders in a business, has the moral right to control the congregation’s actions and to benefit from them. Because the match between a congregation’s mission and a corporation’s stockholders is so close, it seems to me helpful to say that the owner of a congregation is its mission.
An interesting corollary of this line of thought is that when members of the congregation vote, they, too, vote as fiduciaries for the mission. Like the board, each member has a duty to make sure the congregation serves its mission—to vote as a fiduciary for the owner—even if that goes against the member’s preferences or wishes. When a member’s private interests are in conflict with the congregation’s mission, the member’s duty is to vote the mission.
And what is the mission? The great management consultant Peter Drucker wrote that the core product of all social-sector organizations is “a changed human being.” A congregation’s mission is its unique answer to the question, “Whose lives do we intend to change and in what way?” What this means for a particular congregation at a given time is never clear or obvious, and so articulating mission is a continuing task. But a congregation that avoids that task—that simply seeks to please its members or keep doing what it has done in the past—falls short of its true purpose. Growth, expanding budgets, buildings, and such trappings of success matter only if they reflect positive transformation in the lives of people.
By Dan Hotchkiss
2. Reflect & Respond
Beyond the immediate crisis we are facing, there is the longer term future for our congregation to live into We can't know what that future will be like exactly, although we will not be the same as what we have been. If we try to imagine a future beyond the next few month, it is still important to ask ourselves the question "Whose lives does our congregation intend to change and in what way?" Another way to ask it is "Whose hearts, minds and lives does God want our congregation to particularly connect with?"
If it could be said of our congregation, looking back in years to come, See how they made a difference in the live of _______________________,how might you fill in the blank
people who are lonely and alone
people with spiritual
with no spiritual history
food justice
creation care
How do you react to the idea that the congregation is not there to serve the members, the Board or the Minister, but rather the piece of God's will that we are meant to accomplish as a community?
If it could be said of our congregation, looking back in years to come, See how they made a difference in the live of _______________________,how might you fill in the blank
people who are lonely and alone
people with spiritual
with no spiritual history
food justice
creation care
How do you react to the idea that the congregation is not there to serve the members, the Board or the Minister, but rather the piece of God's will that we are meant to accomplish as a community?
3. Read a bit more
We tend to personalize mission as if it belongs to us and it is ours to accomplish. There is a
problem with this way of thinking. The church becomes the ultimate solution to the issues
we face in the world. The church becomes the goal. However, the church is not the end
game in the story of God’s redemption. We spend so much time trying to keep the ship
running that we can easily lose sight of who we are and the very reason God has called us
into being. .....
Maybe it is time to rethink how we go about being the church. I understand that meetings
are necessary and that someone has to preach. I love the church and I love the calling I have
been given. But it is time for us to move from program runners to the permanent revolution
Jesus intended us to be when he established his church. Jesus did not tell his disciples in the
Great Commission to stay there and wait for people to show up. Jesus commanded his
disciples to go, to move, and to proclaim. There was not a program started on that
mountain in Galilee, but a movement of God’s people dedicated to the good news that
Christ has risen.
Throughout the Bible we see the movement of the Spirit in the work of restoration.
Scripture begins with creation and ends with new creation. God is in the business of
bringing about new creation and he is calling us to participate in that work. The church was
established as God’s mission to the world. It doesn’t belong to us, we simply share in it. We
do not have a mission. The mission has us. The Holy Spirit is at work in every corner of the
earth. It is time for us to discern where God is at work and to join in. We do not need to craft
beautiful mission statements to know what we are about. We simply need to know the risen
Lord and to participate in God’s restoration of creation.
problem with this way of thinking. The church becomes the ultimate solution to the issues
we face in the world. The church becomes the goal. However, the church is not the end
game in the story of God’s redemption. We spend so much time trying to keep the ship
running that we can easily lose sight of who we are and the very reason God has called us
into being. .....
Maybe it is time to rethink how we go about being the church. I understand that meetings
are necessary and that someone has to preach. I love the church and I love the calling I have
been given. But it is time for us to move from program runners to the permanent revolution
Jesus intended us to be when he established his church. Jesus did not tell his disciples in the
Great Commission to stay there and wait for people to show up. Jesus commanded his
disciples to go, to move, and to proclaim. There was not a program started on that
mountain in Galilee, but a movement of God’s people dedicated to the good news that
Christ has risen.
Throughout the Bible we see the movement of the Spirit in the work of restoration.
Scripture begins with creation and ends with new creation. God is in the business of
bringing about new creation and he is calling us to participate in that work. The church was
established as God’s mission to the world. It doesn’t belong to us, we simply share in it. We
do not have a mission. The mission has us. The Holy Spirit is at work in every corner of the
earth. It is time for us to discern where God is at work and to join in. We do not need to craft
beautiful mission statements to know what we are about. We simply need to know the risen
Lord and to participate in God’s restoration of creation.
5. Reflect & Respond
In what ways
Find us
We are located on the corner of Broadmoor and Mission
in Sherwood Park, Alberta. |
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