Becoming Prepared for Growth - Preparing the soil

If we discover God's rhythms and live more in sync with God’s heartbeat, we believe a natural result will be to enjoy growth in many ways. We will grow in our knowledge of Jesus; we will grow in favor with the community; we will grow in sites we haven’t thought of yet; and the Lord will add to our numbers.

To engage in the life-giving and life-changing ministry envisioned here we need an organization and a facility that are as flexible and life supporting as we are. Our current building limits our ministry. It is too small and too inflexible to support our current needs. We sometimes limit our ministry based on our facility. Over the next few years we will be need to participate in significant building revisions to support the needs of the church God is calling us to be. Similarly our current organization is based on the model of a Program Church and to support larger numbers of worshipers we will need a different model which likely includes a second called pastor.

How much soil preparation do we need before we call our next pastor? Or do we just sit around and call a super-pastor to do it all for us?

PCUSA and the missional church

Check out this take on being missional in our denomination from Michael Kruse. The basic idea is that being missional is found in our Book of Order. Interesting.

PCUSA and Missional Church.

Becoming better disciples - growing

So first of all I'd like to see us use a different word than "disciples" - but we havent' come up with one yet.

As CGPC becomes even more missional and relational, we believe our calling is to learn to care for what God cares for, to love what He loves – to be in rhythm with the heartbeat of God. This means we are focused on teaching individuals how to develop this kind of heart. We’ve often called this discipleship – and yet it requires a deeper meaning of that word. Essentially, we are being called to live out the commandments of Jesus to love God fully, and to love each other completely.

So how will that get done? What kinds of things do we need to be doing to transform head knowledge to heart and soul and strength? To make love an action verb?

Becoming more relational - nurturing

CGPC is a congregation that relishes in and nourishes relationships. We believe our relationships need to be upward and across, inside and out. We focus on our upward relationship with God, our relationships across with each other. We focus on our relationships inside the body of Christ and those currently outside in our community.

This shows up in our worship, like our sharing time and our greeting time; it shows up in how many small groups exist in our church; it showed up on our survey where we indicated we wanted more time for “recreation.”

What specific goals or projects should we take on to make us even more relational?

Becoming more missional - planting

From its beginning CGPC has felt called to support missions work around the world. As our environment and culture have changed, we now believe God is calling us to move from a “mission-minded” church to a “missional” church – to move from a program approach to supporting missions to an all-church heartbeat for missions.

We believe we are becoming a church where every person feels personally and individually called to be a life-style evangelist or missionary. By living authentic, disciplined Christ-centered lives, wherever we find ourselves becomes our mission field. While it is certain some might be called to serve in other countries, most will find their mission assignment in the workplace, in their neighborhoods, and in their schools. Opportunities exist all around us all the time that allow us to share the love of Christ with others.

We are aware that the term “Missional Church” is used a lot in the Christian community these days. So, if we use that term, we’ll have to continue to define it for our church. Here’s an answer the the question “What is a Missional Church?” from the Presbyterian Global Fellowship:

"In short, the phrase “missional church” refers to the fact that “mission” is not a program of the church but rather the very reason for the church’s existence: as the church, we are who we are because we have been called and sent by God in the power of the Spirit to be witnesses to Jesus Christ in all that we do. . . . The church doesn’t exist for itself. Rather, it exists for God’s Kingdom mission! "

Question: What do we need to do to make this happen? That is what are some specific goals, projects, to-dos?

Vision becoming clearer

Our Core Vision Team has been sifting through all that we've been learning and we are beginning to frame the vision. I thought I'd post some of the info here in case anyone wants to respond. So here goes a series of posts.



The Vision – In a Nutshell
We are a growing, changing organism. We were planted on the site of a former nursery and our purpose is to be like trees and plants in a nursery.
As we look forward to the next few years God is calling us to:
· Become more missional - Planting
· Become more relational - nurturing
· Become better disciples - feeding
· Become prepared for growth – preparing the soil



The next post will discuss 'becoming more missional - planting.' Any comments on the summary version?

To church or not to church

Here's an article that looks at people who are "Spiritual but not Religious." It calls them SBNR's and we all probably know some - many of us were SBNR's at one time in our life.

To Church or Not to Church