Pacific Community Church

A few weeks ago Pastor Jim described a mission and vision process. Listen to it by clicking this link: Mission and Vision Process. A corresponding power-point presentation makes what I say look good and more clear. This gets you caught up. We believe that articulating a mission and vision will serve us powerfully as we grow in our ministries.

We describe this mission and vision process as a Holy Conversation. It is a conversation between us and God and the world. It is a holy one because we want to know what it is that God is calling us to do in our particular place and time.

If it was just one person having the conversation the process might be simple. However, it includes more than one person and more than one group of people who together have more than one way of thinking about things (Youth, Children, Staff, Board, Members, Non-Members, Attendees, Non-attendees...). 

Our goal as the Mission and Vision Team is to develop a conversation where we can talk about what we believe God calls us to be and to do. Our team includes a number of people with different opinions. Our goal will be to present a draft mission statement which will inspire the rest of us to engage the conversation. We expect our first draft to go through a number of iterations (cycles of change) before we all come to a place where we sense it captures clearly who we are and what God is calling us to be. If we are good...we are done by June and ready to begin pressing into it in September.

This process needs to create free space for the conversation. However, we know that we need to compress it into a short time frame or we will get bored or fatigued. The month of May will be key to this conversation. The team started its discussions in late March and into April. We believe we will be able to provide a starting conversation in May to begin what we are calling, "May Madness."

Two forums and two surveys will help us to have a full conversation. You need to register for these conversations so that we can be best prepared. We will have food for those who register-subs or something. We will have child care for those children who need child care.

We are asking you to participate in at least two of the opportunities if not four if you are a ministry leader.

You will be asking the question, "Why do I need to be involved with this?" Here is one answer: "Because you are part of the church and together we participate in the mission of the church." Since we are in this together we should talk about this together. All of us don't have to be experts in this process but all of us are part of the action. Besides, the Holy Spirit, who leads us, doesn't just fall upon one or a few but on all who seek to follow God's direction.

If you have any questions about this process please contact pastor Jim (jim.heuving@pacificcommunity.ca).