Hey Church Family,
Well, what a year we had! Before I take time to lay out some of what I’m excited to see God do at our church in the coming year I need to pause and just say THANKS. Thanks to each and every one of you who stuck it out with me through my first year of ministry at FBC. Thanks to each of you who encouraged Kayli and I over the last year with your notes, words, and smiles. Thanks to each of you who had the courage to offer constructive feedback about changes that were made. Thanks for partnering with our staff in doing some AMAZING outreach like Famfest and Christmas and Easter. Finally thanks for giving me the grace necessary to continue grow into all that it is to be Pastor of Faith Baptist Mill Creek. You guys rock!
Having said all that, I wanted to take a moment today to walk you through some of the things that I am most excited about for our church in the coming year. I’ve grouped these things that most excite me into three categories: In-reach, Outreach, and Administrative. Read on to see how our church will grow together in each of those three areas (and more!) in 2014.
“In-reach”
What’s In-reach? Well the Biblical word for it would be fellowship. Simply put, In-reach is our gathering together and building one another up as believers in Christ. In-reaches are opportunities for us to focus our energy “in-house”, connecting, equipping, and developing one another as we grow up into Christ together.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love outreach! We’ll talk more about that in a moment. But something that Aubree and I realized as we reviewed the last year is that ministry is full of ebbs and flows, and no church can be OUTREACH-ALL-THE-TIME-24/7 without a cost. With that said one of my biggest goals for us here at FBC this year is that we commit to doing “In-reach” better than we did last year. We’ll seek to accomplish that in a number of ways.
The first way we want to improve our “In-reach” is to offer monthly, after-church potlucks on Communion Sundays. In the early church communion wasn’t taken with wafers and shots of juice. Rather, it was taken as part of a meal that the saints shared in together. We want to return to that tradition here at FBC this year through these potlucks. Potlucks provide a fairly easy, but valuable way for us to connect with one another as a family. Be on the lookout for the first one in March!
The second opportunities for In-reach that I want to highlight are worship nights and Re(Fresh) events that will be taking place throughout the year. The worship nights will give us the opportunity to come together in praise and prayer in a more intimate environment than the Sunday morning worship experience. In addition to those nights of worship it’s my goal to host monthly (Re)Fresh evenings at Kayli and I’s home. These evenings will focus on leadership training and ministry equipping and will be great opportunities to come and grow together in the context of food, friendship, and fellowship. Look for the first (Re)Fresh evening this March and the first worship night sometime before Easter!
Outreach
Together as a church we made great progress in our outreach last year and the goal for this year is to continue to build on the foundation that we laid in 2013 which we plan to do in the following ways. First, we’re excited to bring Famfest back this year, only bigger and better. Call it Famfest 2.0. Famfest was a gigantic success for us last year as we ministered to 500+ people from our community and beyond. Perhaps the wildest thing about Famfest was that it all came together in the span of just three months! We are so excited to see what God does this year through Famfest as we build on what we learned last year by starting our planning earlier, investing our resources more strategically, and focusing more on the creativity and gifts of our membership throughout the process. Look for Famfest 2.0 to take place again in early August like last year.
Next, we’re excited to create anticipation for Famfest and other summer outreach like VBS by hosting an outdoors family movie night right here at the church. The Park District puts on some of these nights each year and we are blessed to have the land available to host something very similar. Look for a family movie night this year the Sunday night before VBS kicks off to give us an opportunity to promote it! The last big outreach even we’ll plan on doing that’s NEW for this year will be a Fall Festival this October hosted by Bright Beginnings. This Fall Festival will “fall” (clever, right?) between Famfest and our Christmas services giving us a great chance to share the love of Christ with our community in a traditional “dead space”.
Administrative
Last but not least, administrative goals! One of the overarching themes for our staff this year is “communicate”. Last year we all walked through some challenging times caused, at least in part, by our under-communicating changes that were taking place. This year we are committed to communicating more effectively and consistently than ever and believe that our new governance will help us to that end immensely.
The most important administrative goal I have for our church in 2014 is that we develop a clear and compelling vision statement together. With our new governance in place I look forward to the Senior Leadership Board leading us through the process of drafting such a statement. An exciting part of this process that all members will be involved in will be “Vision Town Halls”. These meetings will allow every member to contribute their individual perspective on what they believe our vision already is/should be to the Senior Leadership Board.
Well, that’s all I’ve got! I hope that what’s been shared above leaves you excited and anticipating all that God will do in our midst in 2014. Let’s commit together to taking these goals to God in prayer throughout the course of this year. Finally if there are any ways that you feel we can become a more effective church in our In-reach, outreach, or administration in 2014 please don’t hesitate to let me know, I would love to get together with you and chat about that!