Discernment

“What then shall we do?”

As you may know, this congregation stands to receive a substantial gift from the trust of a former member. We are presented with the happy challenge of determining what to do with this money. While we all have ideas of what might be done, we must prayerfully seek to understand what God would have us do with these funds. We desire to be of one mind, and to have the mind of Christ.

In order to come to this understanding this congregation will enter into a period of discernment. Our church has created a “Windfall Visioning Task Force” to help us in this process. The task force will not make these decisions on behalf of the congregation, but instead will seek to involve the entire congregation in this process of discerning the will of God. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit will guide us through this process.

In late May and early June we will enter the first stage of this discernment process. We want to hear your thoughts, dreams, and visions for this congregation. We will begin each gathering with prayer, a sharing of basic facts, and a time of Bible study. We will then move into a time of brainstorming, where each person present simply shares what God has laid upon their heart. After this we will go back over these ideas and seek to draw out what principles, policies, and plans are made evident in these ideas. We will take no vote at these meetings, as at this stage we seek only to listen to each other, not to judge.

This time of listening will happen at gatherings in the homes of members (cottage meetings), during regularly scheduled small group meetings, in Sunday School classes, and at open meetings held on the church grounds.

Following this time of listening, we will take the summer to gather additional information, from a variety of sources, and then, in September, we will seek, through voting, to come to agreement.

****The Stages and Tasks of this process are listed below****