Initiatives from the ME²⁵ Action Committee

In February 2010, the Action Committee met to begin mapping a strategy for greater congregation engagement. As a foundation for this effort, we must reiterate the vision for our church. Our vision includes three parts: our mission, our pictured future, and our values.

1. Our mission: to lift up Christ. (That’s it.)

We do this through preaching, teaching and healing (preaching as a description of how we live our lives, teaching as another way to describe discipleship, and healing as being healing agents wherever God places us.) Once again, our work is “to lift up Christ.”

2. Our pictured future: the lives of 10,000 people on the Point and 10,000 people off the Point will be touched by the love of Christ through the work of this church in the next 10 years.

3. Our values: Committed to Prayer

Guided by Love

With this vision as the foundation for our work, we now come to the purpose of this effort; to increase the engagement of our congregation. To enable us to lift up Christ, our people must learn how to preach, teach and heal. God wants us to use our unique giftedness in all three areas of our spiritual life: 1) in our one-on-one relationship with God, 2) in our relationship with fellow believers, and 3) in the way we live in the marketplace.

Therefore, we are committed to helping people discover their unique gifts and their identity in Christ so that they may effectively lift up Christ. Our current structures will be used for this purpose (i.e. Sunday services, ABF classes, small groups, youth and children’s programs, ministry teams). In addition, we will offer strengths classes, spiritual mentoring, coaching and leadership training.

We believe that these efforts will enable our people to know what God expects of them, and give them the opportunity as part of the body of Christ to do what they do best. Learning about God’s expectations naturally leads to spiritual growth. We want to be a church where conversations about spiritual growth regularly happen. We would like to make the issue of spiritual progress a normal part of our conversations. We want to make these conversations graceful, but intentional.

A. We will talk about it on Sunday morning.

B. We will encourage classes and small groups to address spiritual progress.

C. We will attempt to make these discussions a part of our church culture.

The ME²⁵ indicated that we do well in giving, recognition and praise. We would like to do even better. To that end, we will intentionally share the great successes of the people of our church, and teach the skills associated with affirmation/encouragement and recognition.

An issue that has been mentioned throughout our discussions is communication. Our committee believes that improved communication will make us better in every area. We need to explore electronic mediums, written materials, and phone and public platforms. We need to consider it in our budget and personnel planning. This committee will help us create a strategy for communication with a focus toward the issues listed above.