Pastor’s Corner

Date: September 9, 2008

     On August 17th the church met together for a vision casting meeting.  The purpose of the meeting was to enable us as a church to come together and make a statement about who we are and set objectives to help us be who we say we are.  It was to enable us to cast a vision for the goals, programs, and activities of the church.  It enabled us to set priorities for our future efforts.  I believe we had a very productive meeting.

     I asked the church to meet in some small groups and for each group to come up with a vision statement for the church.  We then took those individual statements and combined them to make a single statement.

That statement is: The RSUMC is a Christ-centered, loving and caring congregation devoted to the nurturing and outreach of God’s children. Our vision is to reach and welcome those who do not know the love of Jesus and a welcoming Church family.

      We then set some priorities for activities and programs.  I again asked the group to break up into small groups and dream.  If money were no objective what would be the things the group would most like to see happen.  We came back together and compiled our answers.  I then asked each individual to vote for their top five picks.  After everyone had voted we tallied the numbers.  The top voted were:

#1 - Youth Director-Paid,

#2 - Mini-bus

#3 - Family Trips/Activities

#4 - Bell Choir - youth and adult,

Tied #5 - Organized Youth Group - All ages,

Tied #5 - Children’s Choir

Tied #5 - Local Mission Work

Tied #5 - Organized outreach to shut-ins.

     These are great goals.  The achievement of these goals will take people, effort and a willingness to change.  Without all of these we will have unfortunately wasted a day.  It will take people both in areas of leadership and participation.  You can put together a great program but if no one is willing to lead and no one is willing to participate the program will fold.  Nothing worth having comes easy.  There will be effort that must be spent.  Some will be effort of time.  Some will be effort of sacrifices.  And there will be change.  Some of these may be things that have been done on the past but they are not things being done now.  That means change will have to happen.  Some of these are new ideas.  Again that means change.  I found Bishop Mike’s article interesting (see inside).  We cannot be afraid of changing the ways we do things in order to get where we want to go.  One definition of insanity is doing the same things the same ways while expecting different results.

     It was a good meeting.  We have set direction and priority.  Now let us commit ourselves to follow through and achievement.  If you haven’t been to church in a while, come and see us.  There are good things in store.

A vision for the future