The Leadership Team is proposing the following purpose statement for our consideration at the November 9th Presbytery meeting. The Leadership Team at its October meeting edited the proposed statement as follows:
"The purpose of the Presbytery of Lake Michigan is to challenge, encourage and equip congregations worshiping communities of faith to make disciples of Jesus Christ with the gifts God gives us."
Our rationale is that "worshiping communities of faith" is more inclusive of congregations, mission fellowships, camps, and campus ministries, and aligns with the PC(USA)'s 1001 New Worshiping Communities of Faith movement.
This proposed purpose statement grounds us and redirects our focus from saving the church to the heart of what the church is called to be and do. We have expended too much energy concerned for survival of the church we have known and loved. This statement clarifies why we are a church, why we would want to have thriving congregations, fellowships, camps, and campus ministries: to make disciples of Jesus, to join what God is doing in the world. At the June meeting we discussed "What does a discipleship look like in your context?"
Based on the foundation of this statement, the Leadership Team is contemplating following questions:
- What are the organizational implications of this purpose statement?
- What will we not do because of it? We will no longer...
- What will we do differently because of it? We will give our attention to…
- What outcome(s) does God want? What will we measure so we know when we have reached that outcome?
- How should we staff to support this outcome?
Please contemplate these questions with us and share your thoughts.
1 comment:
The rationale for shifting to the language to "worshiping communities of faith" says more (wonderfully so) about the purpose of such communities than that they are merely worshiping communities--they are communities sent by God to bear witness to Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit. I wonder then, if a slight amendment to the phrase itself might better capture what the rationale implies: "worshiping and witnessing communities of faith."
Also, with the congregations and other communities as the object of the Presbytery's mission (as stated), what or who exactly then is 'the Presbytery' in the statement? It would seem from what is said that what is in view is something more like 'the program structures of the Presbytery.' I say this believing that fundamentally 'the Presbytery' is the corporate body of the congregations and Teaching Elder members that comprise it. If that is so, then we would understand the Presbytery's mission direction to be not what 'it' does for 'us' but what we commit ourselves to do with and for and among each other in mutually supportive ways. Can language be found that might preserve that sense of ourselves?
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