The Watauga Missional Network will meet at Deerfield UMC again this coming Wed. Feb 13th at 10am. Coffee will be ready at 9:30am for anyone that would like to come a few minutes early for a few minutes of fellowship time before the meeting.
In meeting with our DS Lory Beth Huffman this fall regarding the direction of the work of the mission networks, there is one primary question before our group of pastors to adddress:
"What is the greatest need you see in your community that you think the church can meet? Focus. Focus. Focus. Look for deep, high impact in one area."
These are our very specific instructions from Lory Beth.
The Watauga Missional Network met for the first time on Jan. 23, 2013.
As you would guess, there are a multitude of missional needs in our community. We discussed in depth several of the missional needs of our community. We were not able to decide in our first meeting on what would be our primary mission. We decided that we needed time to learn more, ask more questions, think, pray and process and come back to the table at our next meeting ready to address the question again.
One question that came to the table for the leaders to consider is, "What areas of service, from each flock that we represent around the table, are our people willing to serve?
Boone UMC had recently done a missions survey. They made this survey available to us. So at Deerfield, over the last two Sundays, we have passed out the surveys and taken them up during worship to get a better feel for the pulse of the people in where they want to plug in in missions. Just from scanning over the surveys, the results were very much a reflection of being all over the board just like the first time our pastors met with about 10 different areas that are worthy areas of mission being represented in the flock I serve. There was not one place that really stood out above all the others that had much concentration of interest. I have explained to the congregation the work that the Watauga Missional Network is doing and that their answers were important in helping us focus on our coming area of concentration of mission. I am prepared to turn over these surveys to Luke Edwards on Wednesday to begin to crunch numbers and enter data. Luke has an ASU connection to help put the data into a format that will be helpful to us.
Here are some ideas for this coming Wednesday morning. Our meeting time is at 10am and we will need to break at 11:30am at the latest because our first community Lenten Luncheon will be meeting at noon at Grace Lutheran Church.
One item for reflection before the meeting on Wed. am. Rev. Adam Hamilton gave the sermon for the President's prayer breakfast in January after the inauguration. I have put a link to that sermon which is about a 16 minute clip on my webpage at: www.faithliftingstories.com. Go to the page that says Watauga Missional Network. Please plow through the politics and and preview this clip before our meeting together on Wed. The reason for that is what this United Methodist Church is doing in their community. He gives some specific examples of the ways they reach out to their community through their schools. The topic is very much in line with what we have already brought to the table for our own community.
Agenda for Wed.
1. Share prayer needs and open with prayer.
2. Review our discussion from the last meeting. I will be prepared to give about a 2 minute summary of our discussion from the last meeting.
3. Give pastors a chance to report on what happened with doing the survey in their church. Has this happened yet? What have we learned so far?
4. It was proposed at the last meeting to set some short term goals and then look for long term goals. Our first short term goal was to try to collect more information on the heart beat of each congregation and their passion for mission. We did not get as far as being able to set a long term goal at the last meeting.
In doing my doctoral work right now in Educational Leadership, I am personally focused on thinking about how the church can meet the unmet needs of our local schools. That is my area of interest where I plan to pursue doing my dissertation. I say this to let you know I am thinking about what our church could be doing in our local schools every day.
What I found in doing the survey is that most of the people who filled out a survey are interested in missions but their interest was in a great variety of areas. The challenge before our team of pastors who make up the Watauga Missional Network is to narrow our focus and then lead.
In listening to the conversation around the table at the last meeting I do think our network will be able to have a primary goal. I want to commend our group for having 100 percent attendance from each church represented. I also was surprised at the variety of gifts that each church brings to the table. I think about this everyday because this is where my heart is in ministry right now. Here is a possibility, you know, thinking out loud.
Primary Goal: To find a school in our community to serve to meet their unmet needs.
Theology: Our purpose is to be the hands and feet of Christ in our community and to look for ways to make a difference in his name. In making disciples for Jesus Christ in our local church, we look for ways to help them serve and meet the needs around us. Our job as leaders is to help our flock plug in to an identified need.
Approach to the school: We will have to understand that the law does provide boundaries between the church and the state that we will have to follow. Even though in our heart we very much want each person to come to faith in Jesus Christ, if we partner with a school, we will not be able to be an evangelist while we are in the role of being a school volunteer. If we approach the school from the perspective of we are here to serve you, and ask what are your most pressing needs that will make the biggest difference, each school principal would be able to answer that question. They will have to be sure our agenda is to serve or we will burn the bridge before we ever get started. We also need to be straight that our agenda is to serve.
If we choose the umbrella of serving a local school, there are many areas of ministry that could fall under that umbrella.
For example: If you have people in your church who have a strong area of interest in dealing with hunger issues, our local school is the front line for being able to identify families who have the greatest need. We could plug people into a very specific need, like: what happens to families during the summer who usually get a backpack of snacks at the end of the week?
We had some folks at the table who had a surplus of fresh food that they grew during the summer last year. Could we figure out how to make a connection between the families that have great need, and the people who have community gardens or fresh produce in the summer with the help of the local school? Keeping confidentiality is required by federal law when it comes to the students information, which puts the church at a place of asking the school to identify where is the need, and then asking the church to supply the food need. We would have to partner with the school in such a way that the school maintains confidentiality of the students who would receive the food.
That is just one example, building on our conversation at the last meeting of how we can move forward in one direction, but still use a variety of people and their gifts to meet specific needs.
If we do make a decision to partner with a local school, it puts the emphasis of the Watauga Missional Network, to then take this goal back to our church, and work to bring leaders in from the church to lead in the goal.
I have published these notes in the format of my blog so you can read ahead, follow the link that I have listed ahead, and also have the chance to invite key leaders from your church to think ahead, pray ahead, and be involved in this process from the ground up. You are invited to post comments at the end of this article. The blog puts our mission in a format that people in the church or ministry we serve can see and comment.
I look forward to meeting with you on Wednesday morning. I will have the coffee hot at 9:30am. This meeting is for the pastors of the Watauga Missional Network. Rev. Evelyn Lemons
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