We have something wonderful here, given by God’s grace, and this grace is for everyone.
I have heard it said that lawyers work by the maxim: never ask a question to which you do not know the answer. That doesn’t play out in the life of the Church, or certainly did not when gathered at the Annual Meeting we asked you about your aspirations for Grace Church, why such aspirations mattered, and where were we now. You were honest, made yourselves vulnerable and hopeful. You revealed a desire to see Grace grow as a community, and not just for the sake of survival – that would have been asking a question to which we could easily know the answer – but because you treasure the gifts and values of God’s good news and of Christian community, and you want your friends, family and neighbors to taste of them, and grow to share them. Your answers to the questions combined aspirations with why they mattered.
Thank you to the seventy or so people who engaged in the Indaba process at the Annual meeting. The vestry met last weekend to review your responses, and to organize themselves according to the outcomes. I had undertaken to type up every table report, list all action items and critical statements, both positive and negative, and then to attempt to develop a summary in narrative form of what you said. The summary is available HERE.
What we read was a consciousness that we are a church that needs to break out of a holding pattern, which some described as a rut or stagnation. You appreciate the giftedness of one another and seek a future where your abilities and experience are utilized with greater impact for promoting God’s work through Grace. Your marketing instincts came to the forefront, aware of the potential of the facilities we have for the wider community, and the deep relevance of the loving values God brings us in Christ for all people.
We saw a community that wants to be in mission with God, or “missional”. We thought our small groups were excellent, and our offerings to families with young children through the Atrium were very significant. Working with our youth in faith development as they engage the broader world was another important focus. The idea of paying attention to working our faith intergenerationally was a key concept in our sharing. One person described us as being like a vehicle in the lower gears, and we were not quite clear on how to shift into a freer drive. We need to find the ways to unlock God’s potential within us and through us.
On Saturday the vestry were tasked to break down the summary into its active and insightful parts, and then we broke into the “three buckets for action and consideration” that our Senior Warden used to navigate all the information you had generated. These buckets were “things Inside the walls”, “things outside our walls”, and “marketing or communications”. Remembering a Berenstein Bears book from our children’s past, I labelled the three buckets as Inside, Outside, Upside Down! I think Upside Down is an appropriate description of the work of marketing for the Church. The gospel turns the world upside down; our desire to release our potential is about turning the hierarchy of the Church upside down; and even the demands of a decent hearing or noticing within the jam packed world of noise makers requires a different way of seeing and presenting ourselves that might well be the experience of being turned upside down.
The three groupings reminded me also of the basic premise of the work of the Kaleidoscope Institute, which we have been engaging in recent months, namely:
“A missional church is a community of people who look outward and can connect with others who are not already members of any church organization. Reggie McNeal, in his book Missional Renaissance described three shifts that need to happen for churches to be missional:
- From an internal to an external focus.
- From program development to people development.
- From church -based to kingdom-based leadership.”
(Eric Law, Introduction to Holy Currencies, p.1)
We continue to report out to you as each of the groups identifies a few priorities from everything you have submitted to them through your Indaba reports. I have given them the raw data from the table conversations to be a check and balance against my own summary. And I imagine that defining action from their reporting will be a major part of our February meeting.
All of this is connected to the 150th celebration. We are on the move into the next era God has for us. It is a brilliant way of honoring the faithfulness of the past. It is not the only way – there will be events and noticings along the way. Also, the goal of the Sustaining Grace Fund remains before us, and the asking for your participation continues as we seek as full a participation as possible.
And so, we asked the question to which we did not necessarily know the answer. And you said: we have something wonderful here, given by God’s grace, and this grace is for everyone. We want vibrancy, we want to “sell this gig” (as one person put it in a table report), we really want the world to know. That, my friends, is a comprehensive, mutual, total community challenge. It is a call for the revival of our interconnected parts in the Body of Christ. I know God loves to bless moving parts, and will teach us how to get into top speed. Thank you.
–Bishop Alan
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