What is Strategic Church?
Many of you have been curious about the visioning process that our church is engaged in and, with our intensive consultation dates quickly approaching, I thought I would take the time to explain our next step in discerning God's vision for our church. There a basically three main steps. First, our "Does Your Church Have a Prayer?" small groups that we recently launched will teach important biblical principals and cultivate a spirit of prayer in our church that will be crucial as we move forward. Everything we do must be bathed in prayer. Also, The feedback that people provide in these small groups will help us assess the current reality of our church.
Second, during the weekend of May 18-20, a team of consultants will be coming to our church to conduct a series of interviews. They will be interviewing our church's staff, key leaders, newest members, Hispanic members, youth, and others to get a handle on the overall health of our church. In evening congregational meetings during this weekend, they hope to give us feedback in three areas: what we're doing well, where we need to grow, and pitfalls we need to avoid.
Finally, using the feedback gathered from the "Does Your Church Have a Prayer?" small groups and our intensive consultation weekend, our existing vision team will develop a ministry action plan that clearly outlines our goals for ministry. These goals will give shape to everything we do in ministry. They will guide how we allocate our finances, how we deal with our current building concerns, and how we conduct our worship services and small groups.
The main goal of this process is to become as effective as we can be in making disciples of Jesus Christ. This will inevitably involve taking risk, stepping outside our comfort zones, and pursuing new and challenging directions in ministry. Therefore, my main prayer for us is not just that we will be able to discern God's direction for College Heights, but that we will have the courage to follow. Please join me in praying for this process as we seek to make Jesus more important than anything else. In Christ, Adam
