A couple weeks back I posted a blog called, “Visioneering“. It was one of the most well-read blogs I have written up to this point! I planned when I wrote it that I would visit the four components of the strategic plan we’ve written for First Assembly here.
Next Sunday, April 3 at 6:30PM, we’ll be having the first of two Vision 2011 Meetings. We’ll be exploring our strategic plans and begin a conversation about how we can implement this vision through First Assemblies dozens of ministries. If you consider First Assembly of God in Lafayette your home, please be sure to join us!
In that first post, I wrote about our mission: “To create a community where waves of people are transformed by the love of God.”
I know, it’s an audacious goal, but what I love about it is that it has an outcome.
Waves of people–that means more than one at a time. It means we’re looking, personally and corporately, OUTWARDLY. We’re asking ourselves how we can touch waves of people.
On a more basic level, the board and the staff have worked at identifying core values–those most basic qualities that we seek to embody as an organization. The core values nourish our understanding of our mission and remind us throughout the process of identifying vision, setting goals and implementing strategies of what qualities or values we look to retain. Our core values inform us about the nature of the congregation we are and seek to become.
We have identified five Core Values: Discover, Experience, Relate, Serve, and Grow. I might talk about them in the following ways:
Discover: This value expresses our desire to be a church where everyone on the spectrum between unbeliever and mature believer has the opportunity to learn more about God and his power. The Bible and God’s Spirit lead us in the key discoveries possible in the Christian life. It implies that we wish to create a context where people are welcome wherever they are at to come as they are into our church.
Experience: We want for our church to be centered around experiencing God through the power of the Holy Spirit and by applying God’s Word to life. Experiencing God can also be known through serving God actively.
Relate: We’re looking for our congregation to be a community of relationships because we see relationships as the central expression of Christian truth and commitment.
Serve: We see serving God and others through ministry opportunities as key to personal transformation, as well as being a gateway to the four other core values listed here.
Grow: Because we believe it is the expected nature of God’s kingdom to grow, we will unrelentingly focus as a church on corporate and personal growth, transformation and expansion.
In the next post related to “Visioneering“, I’ll be profiling our church’s Vision statement, as defined by the staff and board, as well as others who joined us recently. I’m excited about this process, not because it gives us something on paper with nifty words, but because we are moving toward measurable targets for our church to achieve, and this will translate into an increasingly sharpened focus for all our ministry efforts.
Looking forward to seeing this entire process advance!