Discernment

Our elders voted last night to make the coming program year A Season of Discernment for our congregation. We are about to begin a process lasting at least 9 months, if not a year, which will involve prayer and study and reflection about what God wants us to be and do next as a congregation. We will be using a tool written for New Church Development that we are adapting for becoming a new church ourselves, as a 60+ year old congregation.

If we do this poorly, it will be a waste of our time. If we do this thoughtfully, letting the Spirit do the Spirit's thing, it will be scary/exciting/energizing. And it will definitely make people angry, because it will involve death. We don't like death.

Here's the thing: every living organism has a life cycle that begins with birth and ends with death. (I shared this link last week - check out The Life Cycle Presentation - and after using it at a mini-retreat over the weekend, it seemed to be helpful.)

Churches are living organisms too and there is birth and there is death. The Church of Jesus Christ will never die -- Jesus will always have A Church. But individual congregations and denominations may indeed wither and die. Or at least facets of those congregations and denominations will have to die if those entities want to thrive and grow.

This will tick people off.

But we need to ask ourselves and each other:

Are we are willing to sacrifice the church to keep __________ alive

(or on life support)?

There are countless sacred cows we could place in that blank space. And once again, we'll need to figure out what pleases God and what merely pleases us. And I'm trusting that it's God who will let us know which is which.

The platter shown is Life Cycle by Mark Podval (2005).