I would like to give thanks to God for books that are no-nonsense, practical, but not legalistic. For too long, I have wearied with books in the ministry that are super-heady, have good theology, but their application and data analysis is lacking. Likewise, I am weary of the books that give technical advice without any spiritual grounding... we are building the church, not a business, and they are different.
That rant being over, I am 200 pages into the 400 page book on Planting Missional Churches. (This book highlights how slowly I read).
Here are my major take home points with my analysis added in...
1 - The protestant church has largely failed to focus in North America on planting churches. We have failed. We like to dream of growing only big churches or revitalizing old churches. The challenge is, large churches serve populations effectively, but are low on percentages of growth, so are established churches. Declining churches generally only turn around 10% of the time... think about folks sent to the doctor and told they have to change the way they live or they will die... 90% will still not diet, exercise, stop smoking or stop drinking. They choose to die rather than change. Churches are no different. A lot of time, we would rather die. Hard truth.
2 - When churches focus on evangelism, we often fail. Ouch. The challenge of evangelism is that we must be strongly biblically founded and contextually relevant. Some folks fail on one extreme by being so biblically founded that they are incapable of reaching unchurched folks where they are. Another way to put it is, this group is more interested in answering the questions they think he unchurched should have, rather than the questions they do have. (I know lots of these folk among us). In my opinion, this group is low on trusting that the Spirit is already at work in the non-believer, and that we have to do the converting, not Christ.
The other extreme are those that are so focused on connecting to the context, that they water down the message to become a mirror to the context. Jesus ate among sinners and prostitutes, but Jesus still had a strong message for those folks. A relevant message. These are the folks that hear the questions that unchurched folks are asking, but only endorse the answers the unchurched already have instead of challenging them to move towards who Jesus is. In my opinion, this group is low on trusting themselves that God can use them to speak a special word to the non-believer.
The third group is those that are neither biblically-based or contextually-relevant, i.e., they are largely who the church ends up being today. These folks are more interested in holding onto their traditions and who they are rather than risking it all to preach the gospel. Double ouch.
The fourth group is those who are biblically-founded and contextually-relevant. They incarnate the gospel to the people they want to reach. They are willing to sacrifice their traditions (even though those traditions worked well to reach them) in order to take the basics of the gospel to meet people in a new place. This is where we have to face the tough questions of "do we need Sunday school?" or "do we need to teach faith?" "what constitutes a worship service?" "Is a sermon the best way to convey Biblical truth in worship?" "Am I willing to give up what makes me comfortable to reach those who do not yet know Christ?" Or "Am I willing to become a Jew to those who are Jews so that I might reach the Jews?" as Paul said...
3 - There are LOTS of ways to plant churches, and the rest of the book is how to do so. The book is full of models, types of new church leaders, how to organize administration and structure, etc., etc. Incredibly important stuff that is really heady and a bit too much for me to process.
4 - And most importantly, you aren't going to get anywhere doing anything if your faith is not in the right place. If you are not on your knees crying out to God, being honest about what ministry you are doing and aren't doing hour by hour and week by week, seeking to be held accountable, and sure above all else that you are called to do this... then you aren't going to succeed. Plating a church is not a business endeavor, it is the work of God. My take-home: when we are faithful, there is nothing that can stop us.
That is what challenges my faith here. Again, I see the gifts of Gethsemane before me. Folks at our church have faith that can move mountains, at times. Just before I became pastor, the prayers of our church (and many other churches) helped us to see a child born waaaaaay too prematurely survive and who is now in elementary school. We also have a heart for evangelism.
Our challenge is that we have some that fall into the too biblically-founded group and others that are too contextually-minded. We also have not answered whether or not it is our calling to seek out and save the lost. If we did know that for sure, if we discerned that for sure, if we knew that down to the fiber of our beings, I know our prayer life would be strong enough and we would sacrifice whatever we needed to in order to obey.
Perhaps, that all just shows that we all need to be praying more. Myself, included.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Continuing Ed Staycation - "Sticky Faith"
This week I've been home reading "Sticky Faith" a book about how to create long-lasting faith in kids and youth. It was an awesome study on how churches in the past have failed in helping kids and youth gain faith that lasts past high school. 50% of youth who graduate from youth programs in churches leave the church once they graduate from high school.
To be honest, I was incredibly frustrated reading this book. Mostly because I was taught most of what this book had to say, and I knew it. I found it frustrating, because in my seven years of ministry at Gethsemane, I have never found an effective way to communicate what I read, what I know is true about youth.
But I am insanely stubborn, and I will not declare failure...yet. So, here we go...
1 - The church has spent too long teaching the first step of faith as obedience. It isn't. It is trust. If you want proof that this is true, look at a 3 year-old. Mine, for instance. As I recited the list of erred ways my son had committed last Sunday to a friend, that friend laughed and said, "they really should entitle 3 year old's 'Wait is that a boundary? Let me check.'" My son is not interested in perfectly obeying the rules that I set out for him... yet. Instead, he purposefully is testing all of them, to figure out if I mean what I say, if I am who I say I am, and ultimately if I am trustworthy. I am exhausting myself teaching him obedience, but what he is trying to figure out is if I am trustworthy. If I am trustworthy, if I hold my boundaries, do what I say I will do, eventually (hopefully) he will learn to trust my judgment and will start to obey.
In church, we exhaust ourselves teaching kids what God expects of them. We teach them to love, to do their homework, to read their Bibles, to pray, to forgive, to come to church... and with older kids to not have sex before marriage, etc. But what we don't necessarily teach them is how to trust God.
Maybe we don't introduce faith that way because it is scary. God could fail us. ;-)
The example given in the book was teasing/bullying. When a child faces this, we often tell them to forgive, love their enemy, etc. We tell them how to obey what God would want them to do. We don't start with the dangerous questions of "how can we trust God with this?" "What would it look like if God didn't let us down here?" Instead of "What would Jesus do?" maybe we should ask, "Can we trust Jesus to do something here... and if so, what?"
2 - Here's the really tough news. I think that why we have failed at gpcfortworth to get really sticky faith in our youth is because we don't teach our youth that we are trustworthy.
As parents, too often we say, "because I'm the parent that's why". We don't teach our kids that we are trustworthy and gracious and following the example of God for us. We demand obedience, but we don't necessarily teach them to trust us.
If we can demonstrate, share, be an example for our youth about how we struggle to trust God day to day, then maybe they would trust us. If we can show them how we struggle to do the right thing and how that journey is going for us, maybe they can start to trust our experience... instead of "because I'm mom", we can start to share "because I've made those mistakes, because I know where this could end up, because God has not let me down yet" more often, and maybe then, our kids will want to repeat our behaviors.
3 - Adults need to get caught doing faith. Let's fess up parents. How often do we talk to our kids about where we saw God today? How often do we reflect on how God helped us today? How often do our kids catch us praying and reading our Bibles? How often do our kids catch us journaling our faith? How often do our kids catch us forgiving as we have been forgiven, modeling peace, modeling submission to one another, modeling respect, modeling...?
How are they going to trust our advice if we don't even follow it?
The greatest teacher kids have regarding their faith is their parents. Our kids need to see us trusting God, really trusting God, with the hard parts of our lives. We get to be their laboratory. If mom trusts God with her marriage, with her lost job, with how to handle people talking about her, and God doesn't let her down... then maybe I can trust mom more, and maybe I can trust God more.
4 - We need to be better and more strategic about being church. Gethsemane does an awesome job at being church, but we are super disorganized and hap-hazard about it. This book recommended 5 adults to each kid, to mentor them in the faith.
We have that many people loving our kids, but do we have 5 adults checking in on our kids? Sharing with our kids how they have lived out their faith today?
The best folks to do this are often those who are grand-parent age or older... the kids already have a parent/parents. And mentoring is one of the best ways to get our own faith in a healthier place. Ask a teacher. You really have to know your subject (God in this case) if you are going to teach it.
5 - I've said this again, and again, and again, and again. But maybe since a book said it people will not think that I am making this up. Segregating kids based on age is a horrible idea. Older kids who teach younger kids are more likely to keep their faith. Youth who are part of general worship (not sent off to kids' worship) are more likely to keep their faith. Youth and kids that have many generations interacting and sharing their faith are more likely to keep their faith.
Now this means that worship needs to be multi-generational, it needs to be led by different generations, and different parts of the service need to serve different generations. As Karl Travis at First Pres says, "our goal is to make everyone happy, some of the time." If you are happy and feel connected during a part of worship, awesome. If there is one part of worship that doesn't serve you... then pray that that particular part of worship is reaching someone different in age/culture/language than you, because it probably wasn't meant for you.
Sending kids out of worship is not the key. Segregation wasn't the key in the US for education, and it shouldn't be in the church. Jesus said let the little children come, while the full grown disciples were there. If kids are having trouble during worship, then we need to do worship better to serve them, and we also need to engage their gifts better. They are just as legitimate a part of the body of Christ as you or me. Those who have professed their faith are just as much full members in the body of Christ as you or me. We need to act like it.
I would be upset if you told me that the 30 somethings now needed to leave the room for this part of the service. Wouldn't you?
So there you have it. The rest of the book talked about the breadth of faith. Do we teach kids to do justice? Do we teach them to read things in the newspaper and help them do something about it? (Ahem, community organizing and ACT are great starting points). Do we model volunteering? Do we model service? Faith is more than faith disciplines, it is putting faith into action.
Unlike many churches I know, Gethsemane actually has the tools to respond easily to this call to sticky faith. We have all generations together. We think we are old, but we really aren't. Our median age on a Sunday is probably around 45 or so. We have adults that deeply care and pray for our youth a lot. We have adults who have struggled and continue to struggle in the journey to actually trust God. We have all the resources, but for whatever reason, we are stuck teaching old models that don't work, stuck wishing we were big enough to segregate kids out, stuck hoping that if we can get kids to "act" right they will believe right... but our faith isn't about doing it right. It's about faith and trust and deep, deep love. Let's focus on that.
To be honest, I was incredibly frustrated reading this book. Mostly because I was taught most of what this book had to say, and I knew it. I found it frustrating, because in my seven years of ministry at Gethsemane, I have never found an effective way to communicate what I read, what I know is true about youth.
But I am insanely stubborn, and I will not declare failure...yet. So, here we go...
1 - The church has spent too long teaching the first step of faith as obedience. It isn't. It is trust. If you want proof that this is true, look at a 3 year-old. Mine, for instance. As I recited the list of erred ways my son had committed last Sunday to a friend, that friend laughed and said, "they really should entitle 3 year old's 'Wait is that a boundary? Let me check.'" My son is not interested in perfectly obeying the rules that I set out for him... yet. Instead, he purposefully is testing all of them, to figure out if I mean what I say, if I am who I say I am, and ultimately if I am trustworthy. I am exhausting myself teaching him obedience, but what he is trying to figure out is if I am trustworthy. If I am trustworthy, if I hold my boundaries, do what I say I will do, eventually (hopefully) he will learn to trust my judgment and will start to obey.
In church, we exhaust ourselves teaching kids what God expects of them. We teach them to love, to do their homework, to read their Bibles, to pray, to forgive, to come to church... and with older kids to not have sex before marriage, etc. But what we don't necessarily teach them is how to trust God.
Maybe we don't introduce faith that way because it is scary. God could fail us. ;-)
The example given in the book was teasing/bullying. When a child faces this, we often tell them to forgive, love their enemy, etc. We tell them how to obey what God would want them to do. We don't start with the dangerous questions of "how can we trust God with this?" "What would it look like if God didn't let us down here?" Instead of "What would Jesus do?" maybe we should ask, "Can we trust Jesus to do something here... and if so, what?"
2 - Here's the really tough news. I think that why we have failed at gpcfortworth to get really sticky faith in our youth is because we don't teach our youth that we are trustworthy.
As parents, too often we say, "because I'm the parent that's why". We don't teach our kids that we are trustworthy and gracious and following the example of God for us. We demand obedience, but we don't necessarily teach them to trust us.
If we can demonstrate, share, be an example for our youth about how we struggle to trust God day to day, then maybe they would trust us. If we can show them how we struggle to do the right thing and how that journey is going for us, maybe they can start to trust our experience... instead of "because I'm mom", we can start to share "because I've made those mistakes, because I know where this could end up, because God has not let me down yet" more often, and maybe then, our kids will want to repeat our behaviors.
3 - Adults need to get caught doing faith. Let's fess up parents. How often do we talk to our kids about where we saw God today? How often do we reflect on how God helped us today? How often do our kids catch us praying and reading our Bibles? How often do our kids catch us journaling our faith? How often do our kids catch us forgiving as we have been forgiven, modeling peace, modeling submission to one another, modeling respect, modeling...?
How are they going to trust our advice if we don't even follow it?
The greatest teacher kids have regarding their faith is their parents. Our kids need to see us trusting God, really trusting God, with the hard parts of our lives. We get to be their laboratory. If mom trusts God with her marriage, with her lost job, with how to handle people talking about her, and God doesn't let her down... then maybe I can trust mom more, and maybe I can trust God more.
4 - We need to be better and more strategic about being church. Gethsemane does an awesome job at being church, but we are super disorganized and hap-hazard about it. This book recommended 5 adults to each kid, to mentor them in the faith.
We have that many people loving our kids, but do we have 5 adults checking in on our kids? Sharing with our kids how they have lived out their faith today?
The best folks to do this are often those who are grand-parent age or older... the kids already have a parent/parents. And mentoring is one of the best ways to get our own faith in a healthier place. Ask a teacher. You really have to know your subject (God in this case) if you are going to teach it.
5 - I've said this again, and again, and again, and again. But maybe since a book said it people will not think that I am making this up. Segregating kids based on age is a horrible idea. Older kids who teach younger kids are more likely to keep their faith. Youth who are part of general worship (not sent off to kids' worship) are more likely to keep their faith. Youth and kids that have many generations interacting and sharing their faith are more likely to keep their faith.
Now this means that worship needs to be multi-generational, it needs to be led by different generations, and different parts of the service need to serve different generations. As Karl Travis at First Pres says, "our goal is to make everyone happy, some of the time." If you are happy and feel connected during a part of worship, awesome. If there is one part of worship that doesn't serve you... then pray that that particular part of worship is reaching someone different in age/culture/language than you, because it probably wasn't meant for you.
Sending kids out of worship is not the key. Segregation wasn't the key in the US for education, and it shouldn't be in the church. Jesus said let the little children come, while the full grown disciples were there. If kids are having trouble during worship, then we need to do worship better to serve them, and we also need to engage their gifts better. They are just as legitimate a part of the body of Christ as you or me. Those who have professed their faith are just as much full members in the body of Christ as you or me. We need to act like it.
I would be upset if you told me that the 30 somethings now needed to leave the room for this part of the service. Wouldn't you?
So there you have it. The rest of the book talked about the breadth of faith. Do we teach kids to do justice? Do we teach them to read things in the newspaper and help them do something about it? (Ahem, community organizing and ACT are great starting points). Do we model volunteering? Do we model service? Faith is more than faith disciplines, it is putting faith into action.
Unlike many churches I know, Gethsemane actually has the tools to respond easily to this call to sticky faith. We have all generations together. We think we are old, but we really aren't. Our median age on a Sunday is probably around 45 or so. We have adults that deeply care and pray for our youth a lot. We have adults who have struggled and continue to struggle in the journey to actually trust God. We have all the resources, but for whatever reason, we are stuck teaching old models that don't work, stuck wishing we were big enough to segregate kids out, stuck hoping that if we can get kids to "act" right they will believe right... but our faith isn't about doing it right. It's about faith and trust and deep, deep love. Let's focus on that.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Newsletter: Church group info
Session
The session met in August and had a deep heart to heart conversation about our ministry together since Rev. Lindsay joined us almost seven years ago. We celebrated achieving many goals, and recognized that we need to start discerning the next calling for our congregation together. We will be finding ways to meet with as many of the members as possible to hear about your dreams, passions, and vision for Gethsemane. We want to hear how God is calling each of you, so that we can answer that calling together.
Buildings and Grounds
From George Rodrigues:
We are happy to report that the new flooring for the entry way and the front offices has been completed and looks very nice. The hand towel dispensers in the restrooms all have been installed. The rest of the new tables for the fellowship hall have been purchased and new chairs have also been donated. And we are acquiring bids on electrical work for the lighting in the womens shower and video projector and screen in the Fellowship Hall .
Christian Ed
Rev. Lindsay’s Sunday School class will be led by a variety of folks as we start using the “Engage” online training available at pcusa.org/engage . After we finish the online training we will begin the Engage curriculum itself which the session and evening service have been starting this year. The focus is how to engage the world around us so that we can become effective evangelists.
Thanks to Astrid and Estela the kids’ Sunday school class continues along well. Recently the kids have marked their heights on the door to celebrate how different they are, and then measured their “wingspan” to see how our relative sizes are similar. God makes us similar and yet different... but we are all God’s children.
Evangelism and Mission
We are starting to meet this month to discern how and whether we are called to reach out to the Spanish-speaking community with some sort of mission. All are welcome to attend. We will be using the resource “Starting New Churches 3.0” from the General Assembly.
Thanks to all who have helped with the garden. We will be mulching soon and planning for fall planting probably next month.
Academia has started up and we have two desperate needs:
1 - At least two volunteers to work with the children in the children’s room.
2 - A teacher for the citizenship questions in Spanish.
A group is meeting at Andy Wong’s home and is also using the “Starting New Churches 3.0” book discerning about a mission/outreach initiative to reach predominantly English-speakers.
Anything we can do to spread the Gospel and bring others to Christ is faithful work for God... please join us.
Fellowship and Care
We give thanks for a wonderful party in August to celebrate our last Sunday with our foster kids and celebrate that they were being reunited with family. We also celebrated an amazing 35 years of ministry for Rev. Lew Holmes.
This month, we are looking forward as a congregation to focusing on “Caring” about our neighbor. We will be attending the Allied Communities of Tarrant Delegates Assembly where we will meet with other churches, hear stories, and commit to strengthening our congregations and our connections with other churches and the community so that we can learn to truly be neighbors again. We will be having a potluck Sunday, September 23rd, to celebrate the Delegates assembly as well as some special birthdays in our congregation. Please plan on attending.
We also look forward to the Fall Festival which will be taking place at the end of October.
SAP
SAP has prepared and sent a budget proposal to session. Starting in September we will be focusing on stewardship in worship, sharing videos that the youth helped prepare to focus us on what we all believe about giving, offerings, etc.
Too often we live with an attitude that “God needs to give me a little more, THEN I will give.” Instead we are called to recognize that God has blessed us abundantly, and God always cares for us, thus our giving is a demonstration that we celebrate that God has blessed us and we trust that God will care for us especially as we grow more faithful in our offerings.
We challenge each member to move towards or even beyond tithing, which is giving 10% of your income. We give because we trust God. We give because we are deeply thankful. And we give because we are excited to see what God can and will do through our generosity.
Worship
We give thanks for Daniel Martinez and his piano playing these past Sundays. His music ministry is a blessing to us all. We also continue to keep Phyllis and Jim in prayers as they struggle with health concerns.
Women’s Group
Don’t forget to lift up in prayer our women’s group as many travel to MoRanch for the Hispanic Women’s Bible Conference the last weekend of this month. This is a renewing time in the faith of our women, and we hope that they return to us impassioned and excited about their faith.
The session met in August and had a deep heart to heart conversation about our ministry together since Rev. Lindsay joined us almost seven years ago. We celebrated achieving many goals, and recognized that we need to start discerning the next calling for our congregation together. We will be finding ways to meet with as many of the members as possible to hear about your dreams, passions, and vision for Gethsemane. We want to hear how God is calling each of you, so that we can answer that calling together.
Buildings and Grounds
From George Rodrigues:
We are happy to report that the new flooring for the entry way and the front offices has been completed and looks very nice. The hand towel dispensers in the restrooms all have been installed. The rest of the new tables for the fellowship hall have been purchased and new chairs have also been donated. And we are acquiring bids on electrical work for the lighting in the womens shower and video projector and screen in the Fellowship Hall .
Christian Ed
Rev. Lindsay’s Sunday School class will be led by a variety of folks as we start using the “Engage” online training available at pcusa.org/engage . After we finish the online training we will begin the Engage curriculum itself which the session and evening service have been starting this year. The focus is how to engage the world around us so that we can become effective evangelists.
Thanks to Astrid and Estela the kids’ Sunday school class continues along well. Recently the kids have marked their heights on the door to celebrate how different they are, and then measured their “wingspan” to see how our relative sizes are similar. God makes us similar and yet different... but we are all God’s children.
Evangelism and Mission
We are starting to meet this month to discern how and whether we are called to reach out to the Spanish-speaking community with some sort of mission. All are welcome to attend. We will be using the resource “Starting New Churches 3.0” from the General Assembly.
Thanks to all who have helped with the garden. We will be mulching soon and planning for fall planting probably next month.
Academia has started up and we have two desperate needs:
1 - At least two volunteers to work with the children in the children’s room.
2 - A teacher for the citizenship questions in Spanish.
A group is meeting at Andy Wong’s home and is also using the “Starting New Churches 3.0” book discerning about a mission/outreach initiative to reach predominantly English-speakers.
Anything we can do to spread the Gospel and bring others to Christ is faithful work for God... please join us.
Fellowship and Care
We give thanks for a wonderful party in August to celebrate our last Sunday with our foster kids and celebrate that they were being reunited with family. We also celebrated an amazing 35 years of ministry for Rev. Lew Holmes.
This month, we are looking forward as a congregation to focusing on “Caring” about our neighbor. We will be attending the Allied Communities of Tarrant Delegates Assembly where we will meet with other churches, hear stories, and commit to strengthening our congregations and our connections with other churches and the community so that we can learn to truly be neighbors again. We will be having a potluck Sunday, September 23rd, to celebrate the Delegates assembly as well as some special birthdays in our congregation. Please plan on attending.
We also look forward to the Fall Festival which will be taking place at the end of October.
SAP
SAP has prepared and sent a budget proposal to session. Starting in September we will be focusing on stewardship in worship, sharing videos that the youth helped prepare to focus us on what we all believe about giving, offerings, etc.
Too often we live with an attitude that “God needs to give me a little more, THEN I will give.” Instead we are called to recognize that God has blessed us abundantly, and God always cares for us, thus our giving is a demonstration that we celebrate that God has blessed us and we trust that God will care for us especially as we grow more faithful in our offerings.
We challenge each member to move towards or even beyond tithing, which is giving 10% of your income. We give because we trust God. We give because we are deeply thankful. And we give because we are excited to see what God can and will do through our generosity.
Worship
We give thanks for Daniel Martinez and his piano playing these past Sundays. His music ministry is a blessing to us all. We also continue to keep Phyllis and Jim in prayers as they struggle with health concerns.
Women’s Group
Don’t forget to lift up in prayer our women’s group as many travel to MoRanch for the Hispanic Women’s Bible Conference the last weekend of this month. This is a renewing time in the faith of our women, and we hope that they return to us impassioned and excited about their faith.
Newsletter: Pastora post
On Labor Day, I was sitting in the garden with several of you, weeding, dodging fire ants, and having a good time. So, I asked 5 of you a simple question, “If you could dream a dream for Gethsemane, what would it be?” (And money were not an issue).
Most of you probably don’t remember my asking you that 7 years ago when I first came... but I did. I completed probably 15 or so intentional visits and asked many of you (some of whom are now part of the Church Triumphant) what your dream would be... It is a blessing to see how God has worked in us over the past 7 years just hearing the new answers.
7 years ago, many of the answers were honest, genuine, and reflected a desire to strengthen Gethsemane itself... heal past mistakes... build worship and christian education that would strengthen our faith. You dreamt of bringing back folk who had left because their feelings had been hurt. You dreamt of a worship service that had passionate music, that all ages enjoyed, Sunday school for kids, and more involvement of different age groups in the church.
Many of those dreams have been answered in some way or another. God is good.
Labor Day, I sat and asked 5 of you the same question... Wow! The dreams have gotten bigger! There were dreams of schools, community centers, family development programs, connections with artists in the community, caring for at-risk youth by involving their entire families in a safe space. There were dreams of developing partnerships with TCC and TCU and different societies in Fort Worth.
I am so blessed to serve with a congregation that in the last 6 years since we chose our vision statement, we have all really begun to have faith that can walk on water.
Now, I am hopeful that with the training we can obtain through Allied Communities of Tarrant, with the partnerships in ACT, and with most of all that passion and vision that you have, we can discern the next step in faith as Gethsemane that we can all take together. Let’s get out of the boat and walk towards Jesus!
Blessings,
Rev. Lindsay
Most of you probably don’t remember my asking you that 7 years ago when I first came... but I did. I completed probably 15 or so intentional visits and asked many of you (some of whom are now part of the Church Triumphant) what your dream would be... It is a blessing to see how God has worked in us over the past 7 years just hearing the new answers.
7 years ago, many of the answers were honest, genuine, and reflected a desire to strengthen Gethsemane itself... heal past mistakes... build worship and christian education that would strengthen our faith. You dreamt of bringing back folk who had left because their feelings had been hurt. You dreamt of a worship service that had passionate music, that all ages enjoyed, Sunday school for kids, and more involvement of different age groups in the church.
Many of those dreams have been answered in some way or another. God is good.
Labor Day, I sat and asked 5 of you the same question... Wow! The dreams have gotten bigger! There were dreams of schools, community centers, family development programs, connections with artists in the community, caring for at-risk youth by involving their entire families in a safe space. There were dreams of developing partnerships with TCC and TCU and different societies in Fort Worth.
I am so blessed to serve with a congregation that in the last 6 years since we chose our vision statement, we have all really begun to have faith that can walk on water.
Now, I am hopeful that with the training we can obtain through Allied Communities of Tarrant, with the partnerships in ACT, and with most of all that passion and vision that you have, we can discern the next step in faith as Gethsemane that we can all take together. Let’s get out of the boat and walk towards Jesus!
Blessings,
Rev. Lindsay
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)