Dreaming the Dream
Dreaming the Dream
Friends, I interrupt my regularly scheduled programming because I want to share with you how excited I am for the season of life our congregation is in!
We have begun a process of discernment, learning, and visioning with the Rev. Dr Amy Gearhart, ACC, Ed.D, and just completed our first gathering on Saturday morning, June 17. We learned a lot from Rev. Dr. Gearhart, and we had a lot of fun.
We started first by naming the descriptive terms that fit who we believe Lakewood UMC.
Compassionate. Inclusive. Risk-taking. Resilient. There are so many ways to describe the abundance in our congregation, and getting together to share in that activity was invigorating. Then we learned a bit about how churches in general are doing (it isn't great!), and talked about the difference between Adaptive Solutions vs. Technical solutions.
We are in a time where we need to be very adaptive as a church, because as I am sure all of you are aware, the world around us is changing rapidly! Instead of a five year plan in a three ring binder, Rev. Gearhart invited us to consider operating with a "strategic intent"
A strategic intent is a sense of intention, discovery, and opportunity that can be communicated as worthwhile to all we serve. It should not focus so much on today’s problems, which are normally dealt with by the church’s visions and missions, but rather on tomorrow’s opportunities.
Next, we were given post it notes and asked to write down moments in our church history that we then were told to put on a long piece of butcher paper that had a "timeline" from 1881 to 2023. The church history nerd in me rejoiced.
This was a lot of fun. We spent a lot of time hearing stories and laughing at things folks remembered from their growing up or being married at our church. And I got to share some of the really cool things in our more prolonged history that made ME proud of this church's story, and connected what we are up to now to who we were in the 1920s and 1930s.
And then, the last exercise was moving for me. Rev. Gearhart told us to take the qualitative words we had used to describe who we were and write down the ones that our church needed to thrive going forward into the future. Then she told us to place it on a piece of butcher paper with a timeline that BEGAN in 2023, and pointed forward.
If the fruitfulness of the conversation we had was indicative of anything, then I am having a hard time containing my joy and enthusiasm for where I believe the Holy Spirit will lead us! If you want to be a part of how the future vision and “strategic intent” is created, please let me know! Just email ben@lumc.net.
All to the greater glory of God!
