- Individuals – please fill in this form with your responses to each of the 3 questions and your reflections about the Church’s strengths/values and challenges for each.
- Couples/Families – each person should fill in their own form with responses to the 3 questions. Consider sharing your responses with each other and listen for the strengths/values and challenges you hear in each other’s stories about the church. Write those reflections in 1–2-word responses on your form.
Getting Started
- Read the Opening Prayer (below) quietly or aloud.
- Read the Mission Study Primary Purpose and Session 1 purpose (below). If you have any questions or comments – please write those on your form. If you’d like a personal response from the pastors, please include your name.
3 Questions for individual response using this fillable form – up to 30 minutes.
- Write. Type your response to the first question (Set a timer for 5 minutes), following prompts on the page.
- Pause. After 5 minutes, stop writing and take a brief pause.
- Reflection – Individual – If you are doing this on your own, take 2 minutes to write strengths/values and challenges that you see in your story.
- Reflection – Couple or Family – If you are doing this with one or more people, take time for each person to share their story while the other(s) listen deeply and reflect on the strengths/values and challenges they see in your story. Ask them to name those strengths/values and challenges in 1–2-word responses. Write those on your form.
Repeat this process for the next 2 questions.
Closing – 5 minutes
- Be sure you have written all responses needed on your form.
- Read the Closing Prayer (at end, after last question) quietly or aloud.
- Write this sending question where you can read and reflect in the days ahead: As you continue to think about these stories, consider how you sense God’s spirit has been at work in the life of the Church.
- Submit your form. Thank you!
Mission Study Primary Purpose
To provide a process that will accurately reflect who we are as congregation – including who we have been, what is at the core of how we feel called to follow God in this time and place, and what we collectively envision for our next pastoral leadership.
Mission Study
Conversation Session 1 of 3
Purpose: To reflect on who we are as a congregation and who we have been, including core values and identity that carry forward.
Opening Prayer
God of Love,
You are with us in every transition and change.
As we enter into this new era with excitement and even some anxiety,
we recall your deep compassion, presence, and abounding love.
We thank you for the gifts, talents and skills with which you have blessed us.
We thank you for the experiences that have brought us to this moment.
We thank you for the work of others that gives breadth and depth to our own work.
Be with us as we move forward, rejoicing with you and supporting one another.
We ask this in your Holy Name. Amen.
– AUTHOR UNKNOWN
Closing Prayer
Lead us on our journey from who we are to who you want us to be; so that patience is built into us, kindness is assumed in us, gentleness is part of us, compassion flows from us, truth is second nature to us, and the commitment of love is part of us. Let us go gladly on the journey towards your vision. Let us journey in the peace and power of the Spirit. In Christ we pray, amen.
From: ‘Lead us on our journey’ by Ruth Harvey