Report
to Charge Conference 10-26-04
Vision for
Life-changing experiences:
that’s what the church is about. The power of Christ touches peoples lives and
hearts to save and heal and set free, to strengthen and bless and help overcome.
We believe in the power of Christ: We are not stuck. Life is not
hopeless. Death is not the end. Sin is not all powerful.
As we worship, fellowship,
learn, pray, serve here at Good Shepherd, we grow in the power of Christ. It
flows to us and through us. The church is the Body of Christ, broken for the
world, caring for the world, shining as a light in the world. As
This is my vision – that
we grow as a fellowship where people come to life-changing experiences in
Christ.
1st
– We can change lives by reaching out to the 12 Step groups that meet at Good
Shepherd.
Between 150-200 people come
here every week for 12 Step meetings. They are grateful for the support
of the church as they gather to find life-changing experiences with God that
bring freedom from drinking, smoking, food addiction, or drugs. They say things
like, "This room is so nice. We are so glad to meet here." And
"Thank you for opening your church for us."
Now these groups are called
"Anonymous" for a reason. If you’ve known someone who’s had a
problem with an addiction, they can feel really badly about themselves. They
don’t want others to know. They don’t want people to reject them because
they have a problem.
So they come to a group
where they can be anonymous, where no one from work or their family knows.
People give them support, prayer, friendship and help, and the power of God
touches their lives and frees them from addiction to these destructive things.
The "anonymous"
part makes it difficult for us to go to these meetings and invite people to come
to worship. I’m sure people at these 12 step groups don’t want to sit in
worship thinking that we know struggle with addiction.
But we can reach out to
these groups in friendliness and prayer. Here’s how we’ve reached out
lately:
- in friendliness when we
see people coming to meetings;
- in opening the rummage
sale and giving friendly greetings as people shop;
- Mary Jo led the youth in
taking plates of cookies to the 12 Step groups, with a message that we care
about them;
- we pray in worship, at
least once a month, for those who meet here to find hope and freedom from
addictions.
2nd
– We invite people to life-changing experiences with Christ in worship.
In her report, Marcia gave
statistics about children. Between the ages of 5 and 18, the average child
spends 15,600 hours at school, watches 15,288 hours of TV, and spends 832 hours
in worship and Sunday School.
What happens in worship is
unique. It doesn’t happen anywhere else in people’s lives. We don’t gather
at work or school or in our neighborhood or at sporting events and say,
"Let’s thank God and open our souls to God and ask God to touch and speak
to us." Worship is the only place in our lives where we – corporately –
do that.
Now, it’s wonderful when
God does touch our lives at work, or when a child comes home from school and
says, "Jesus was with us at school today." But we don’t gather in
these places and ask for holy experiences. That’s what we do in worship.
People need a place where
they can open their hearts to God, where they find Jesus loves them, where they
are challenged to serve and filled with God’s Spirit so they can serve. People
need the touch of heaven upon their lives – God’s presence and touch and
love are what save people from hell on earth.
Worship at Good Shepherd is
deep and powerful. We need to keep that as our vision. We need to offer visitors
– and each other – our best. People come here looking for God. They want
their souls to be fed, their hearts touched, their spirits healed. People come
looking for that.
Worship can speak to our
hearts and help us know God in ways that nothing else can. Through music,
through Scripture, through the faith of friends sitting beside us, through
God’s word, and through the spirit of the fellowship, worship can change us.
Andrew Garrett blessed the
socks off me with his confirmation promise. He promised the church that he would
come to worship instead of going to the church library. What a great thing! He
feels secure in your love for him, so he can be honest about where he’s been
spending his time on Sunday mornings. He feels drawn to something in worship –
that something is happening, that something valuable goes on in worship that he
has not valued.
Beloved, we owe it to Andrew
Garrett to give deep and meaningful and holy worship, to offer our best.
3rd
– We open the door for life-changing experiences by raising up leaders.
Two adult leaders for the
Winter Youth Retreat will be college students: Michelle Skupski and Jennifer
Whited. How did they get to be leaders? Because their families, and this church
family, not only raised them to faith, you raised them to leadership.
When Tom Schultz came to
Good Shepherd, he was searching. Now he’s spent two years teaching Disciple
Bible Study and will be leading the Mission Work Team for next year. This is a
church that not only helps people grow in faith, but also calls and equips
people for leadership and service. I believe this is part of our calling from
God.
4th
– We offer life-changing fellowship through deeper involvement in Missions.
We have a strong support for
Missions here: People support Berea Children’s Home and the WestSide Ministry
and other groups and projects. There is a deep concern and love for neighbors
and for the needy here.
In her report, Mary Jo gave
Barna research reports about what teens desire for their future:
- 83% want a comfortable
lifestyle;
- 77% want a clear purpose
in life;
- 71% want to live with a
high degree of integrity;
- 66% want a close
relationship with God;
- 56% want to make a
difference in the world.
One of the ways that we help
teens find those things is take them on Mission Work Trips. Few our teens have
known empty cupboards. All their lives they’ve had more than they needed. When
they visit a home where the roof leaks and the bread-winners are disabled, they
see something in life that they have never seen before. When they stand in a
village where there is no electricity and the water is not safe to drink, they
experience life in a new way.
My parents and grandparents
told me about the Depression, what it was like to have empty cupboards. They
knew need and hardship. It helped them see how precious life is and how we do
not live for ourselves alone, but for each other.
Today’s teens need to
learn that – so they can have a purpose in life, live with integrity, know the
difference between a comfortable lifestyle and an pampered lifestyle, so they
can have a close relationship with God and make a difference in the world.
Mission Work Trips are training grounds where teens and adults grow in faith and
character, in compassion for others and understanding of people.
I’ve been reading in the
paper lately about teens whose lives were changed by Mission Work Trips.
This doesn’t mean that
every teen that goes on a Mission Work Trip will become a missionary or church
worker. It means that the teens who grow up to build cars at the Ford plant, or
work on the line, or be a nurse or teacher or accountant or restaurant owner –
that they will have compassionate hearts and be servants, that they will
remember the poor, that their Christmas gift list will be changed because they
have stood on the mud floor of a hut in Honduras and seen a mother cry for joy
when she finds her baby can be healed of parasites by the medicine this work
team has brought.
We need to grow in Missions
– in what we know and how we reach out and where we serve. We need to take the
next step – and urge, not just teens, but all of us, to be more deeply
involved with hunger and pain and tragedy in this world. This not only changes
the lives of others, but it changes our lives as well. As we serve, as we give,
as we care, Christ slips into our hearts and transforms us.
This vision for Good
Shepherd is not new. It is not mine alone. I’ve just restated what the church
developed when Allan Zagray came for his consultation. We have not raced through
his recommendations, nor through the goals we set for ourselves. We are
proceeding like the turtle – slow and steady. We aren’t going to get the
bases loaded this year and hit a grand slam. But we are going to get the job
done. Here are the goals we set for Good Shepherd:
Newcomers
We will develop a system to
welcome newcomers to our community and visitors to our church that will fully
assimilate them into the life of our congregation.
Children and Youth in the
Community
We will expand our
ministries with children and youth to include a focus on young people from the
community.
Educational Ministries
We will build on the strong
foundation of educational ministries by providing additional short and long-term
opportunities for faith formation.
Persons and Families with
Special Needs
We will develop ministries
that reach out to persons with special needs, families under stress, and those
dealing with unique circumstances.
Expand Confirmation
We will develop a more
comprehensive Confirmation training program for youth and their parents.
Leadership Development
We will develop a process to
identify persons with gifts for leadership and to recruit, train, and support
them in their ministries.
Deepen Worship and
Spirituality
We will deepen the
experience of worship through interactive prayer, introducing the Scriptures,
and more frequent opportunities for Holy Communion.
In cooperation with
universities and seminaries, Good Shepherd will become a teaching parish,
training persons for leadership in our church and in the church-at-large.
We understand that these
goals do not describe the end of our journey as a community of faith. Nor are
they a detailed road map for the next three to five years. Rather, they
represent the sense of direction we have received as a gift from God as we have
sought to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ and to be open to the leading of
the Holy Spirit.
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