PRIMED 4 U!
We started out our new year
together by digging deeper in the scriptural basis for our new church mission
statement: PRIMED 4 U! Last year, our
strategic visioning team helped our church come up with our new mission
statement. At that time last summer, our team came up with words that started
with each letter that were words to describe who we believe God is calling our
church to be and to emphasize if we are going to be a church in our prime
again. So we are taking the new mission
statement and breaking it down, one letter at the time per Sunday since the
beginning of the year. Knowing that
people may not be able to be in church every Sunday, and we all know there has
been a ton of sickness around us, we have made a strong effort to put the
weekly sermons on our new church website so if you have missed a Sunday, or at
a later point in time you want to come back to these sermons, you will have
online access to the sermon. Stephanie, our church secretary, has put a great
deal of time into helping get our new church webpage going and functional. We
still have more work to do, but we have started. You can check out the progress so far at: www.deerfieldumcboone.org and go to the tab for sermons.
Here are a
few of the really great things that are happening: 1) Deerfield is trying some
new things this year. 2) God is moving
in our church in an ever so gentle way. The nudge of the Lord is enough to let
us know that God is leading us, but the Lord has not shoved us over the cliff
of change in such a hurry that we have all been scared to death. 3) We are talking about the future of our
church, praying about our future, and the Lord has helped us realize that to
reach the next generation with the gospel some things are going to have to
change, and that comes as really hard news for most of us who want things to
stay the same. We are not planning to
change things randomly, but with prayer and God leading, we are willing to move
in the direction that God is leading.
Our
strategic visioning team met for the first time this year last week. We will have different leaders on our team
form committees to do the ground work in different areas that we are seeing a
need that needs to be addressed. Chris
Burns is working on hospitality and may be contacting you soon if this is an
area of interest to you or a place where you feel really gifted to serve, then
tell Chris you want to help by being on this team of people who are willing to
sit down and work out the nuts and bolts of how people experience hospitality
when they come through the doors of our church.
This is just one example. As our
plan unfolds, we will share more with the congregation step by step.
Hospitality is our first place that we are giving our attention in the new
year.
One change
in worship for the new year:
We have
added a time of greeting your neighbor into the morning worship time. We are going to try this out for a
while. The lay person who gives the
opening prayer and announces the first hymn will be the person who asks you
weekly to briefly turn and greet your neighbor.
The pianist will start playing through our opening hymn. When our choir director Pat Lanno, gives us
the cue that it is time to start singing the first verse, we are encouraging
the congregation to be back at their pew and ready to start singing the opening
hymn. Rather than this being a time of chaos that really looks like an
intermission at a movie, let’s do this as an act of praise to the Lord. Our first Sunday of adding in the greeting
last week went great! We are truly glad to greet one another because God has
blessed us with yet another opportunity to worship Him together. Please use
this opportunity to say hello to your neighbor. If there is someone at the
opposite end of the church that you do not get to greet, please remember to
make an effort right after worship to seek that person out to speak to
them. So in the coming year we may see
some changes that we hope are for the good of the work God is doing among us.
Let’s be brave together, and watch for the hand of the Lord to lead us. We may
not want to change anything, however God is calling us to prepare our church
for a future with hope, and for us that will mean change.
