It’s hard to believe that I am seven months into my internship here at Lord of Life. A third of my time with you has come and gone in what seems like the blink of an eye. I could write a sentimental blog that recaps all of the emotional rollercoasters from the past few seasons, but instead, I want to continue to face forward and look to the future of ministry at Lord of Life. There is nothing wrong with embracing the past and remembering it, but having a vision for the future is what propels us forward into the work God is calling us to do.
I like to think of visioning as “picturing an end result and then figuring out how to get there.” Over the last year, Lord of Life entered a visioning process, entitled “Share the Light,” and asked ourselves: Where do we see God leading our congregation in the next three years? Through that process we realized that our space, and lack thereof, was a real hindrance to our growth. We envisioned a pathway to update our building to fire code in order to build an expanded, multi-purpose community space off of our current welcome area. Without the visioning process, we may have just continued with the status quo, and continued to wring our hands at the lack of meeting space needed each week.
This past Saturday, during our Urban Immersion trip to Hamilton, we met with Pastor Shaq of Truth and Life Community Church, and she shared with us about how she recently led a visioning board seminar where people came to vision where they want to be in mind, body, in spirit over the next year. They assembled words, pictures, and Scripture on their boards to serve as a visual reminder and roadmap of the path they need to take in order to reach their goal.
As part of my internship project here at Lord of Life, I want to help develop a scalable visioning process that can be used by each of our Ministry Areas. Imagine if we had a two-year roadmap of where we wanted to be in the areas of Care, Fellowship, Adult Learning, Youth, Worship, Evangelism, Property, Outreach, and Stewardship; what is God calling us toward in each of these areas? To take on all of these at the same time would be foolishness, so I starting with Stewardship, and if it goes well, the same process can be used by the other Ministry Areas. I cannot, nor do I want to, do this all on my own. I want this process to be empowering to members of this congregation as they assume roles of leadership and service. If you are interested in serving as part of this new Stewardship Visioning Team, please contact me:
Maybe God isn’t calling you to serve on this new visioning team, but take some time in silence and prayer, and ask God, “where are you calling me to use my gifts, talents, and passions? How do you want me to grow God? Give me a vision of how I can serve you!”
God Bless,
Corey