Wednesday, February 28, 2007
A time for healing
Our church has embarked on a journey of spiritual renewal called Refocusing. Its an established, intentional process that we are praying will renew our church and realign our focus with God's ministry through us.
This weekend, we held the first of 3 summits. It was incredible! First miracle - people showed up. The Refocus Leadership Team (of which I'm a part) wasn't sure how many people would willingly give up their Friday evening and Saturday morning to come and be part of the process. We thought they might be apathetic - or think that others will do the work.
Second miracle -people were honest - even about tough issues. One of the excercises involved creating a memory wall. We listed all the milestones, painful memories and history of the church since its beginning in the 1970s. It was insightful and at times very emotional. Our coach told us that the painful events represented broken relationships and that we needed to "own" our past before we could move forward.
Third miracle - there was unity and community. One of our challenges as a church has been a dividedness that has kept us apart - cliques have formed, there's a tendancy to gossip - all the nasty stuff that can happend in a group of people, but should have no place in the church. I think this summit moved us closer to true unity. By honestly interacting with each other, we started to tear down the obstacles to building community. Its an amazing start.
Yet, at the end of the day, it comes down to this...what will renewal of our church mean for my life? How am I personally going to change my priorities in order to bring them in line with God's?
Those are tough questions that I have been wrestling with. Its one thing to say "we need more youth ministries", but quite another to say "I'm going to give 2 hours a week so that I can help create and lead a youth ministry."
We did an excercise where we compare our actual values (that's ACTUAL values - not preferred values) to God's values. To be perfectly honest, I have a grand canyon sized gap between what I actually value, lived out by what I spend time doing and thinking about, and what God values. It ain't pretty - but its reality. Am I willing to change? How much? Yikes!
This weekend, we held the first of 3 summits. It was incredible! First miracle - people showed up. The Refocus Leadership Team (of which I'm a part) wasn't sure how many people would willingly give up their Friday evening and Saturday morning to come and be part of the process. We thought they might be apathetic - or think that others will do the work.
Second miracle -people were honest - even about tough issues. One of the excercises involved creating a memory wall. We listed all the milestones, painful memories and history of the church since its beginning in the 1970s. It was insightful and at times very emotional. Our coach told us that the painful events represented broken relationships and that we needed to "own" our past before we could move forward.
Third miracle - there was unity and community. One of our challenges as a church has been a dividedness that has kept us apart - cliques have formed, there's a tendancy to gossip - all the nasty stuff that can happend in a group of people, but should have no place in the church. I think this summit moved us closer to true unity. By honestly interacting with each other, we started to tear down the obstacles to building community. Its an amazing start.
Yet, at the end of the day, it comes down to this...what will renewal of our church mean for my life? How am I personally going to change my priorities in order to bring them in line with God's?
Those are tough questions that I have been wrestling with. Its one thing to say "we need more youth ministries", but quite another to say "I'm going to give 2 hours a week so that I can help create and lead a youth ministry."
We did an excercise where we compare our actual values (that's ACTUAL values - not preferred values) to God's values. To be perfectly honest, I have a grand canyon sized gap between what I actually value, lived out by what I spend time doing and thinking about, and what God values. It ain't pretty - but its reality. Am I willing to change? How much? Yikes!
# posted by KRI @ 2:33 PM 
