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If We Wanted Easy, We’d Be Done . . . and Probably Doing It Again

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By Dan Amos

“Challenging.” That’s the nice way of saying being pushed out of your comfort zone. That’s where I am regarding our transition to our next pastor and exactly where I expected to be. We chose to engage an intentional interim pastor, not because we expected him to do things for us, but because we wanted to be challenged. We want Elim to reach its potential for what God has for us.

In elder meetings and Transition Team meetings, we are looking at where Elim has been and where we want to be in the future. I don’t always like what I hear, nor do I always agree. But the process is important, and I remind myself that we want this and need this. It would have been simpler to immediately form a search committee and hire a senior pastor, but we want to find the right person who will lead us to more effectively reach our community. Even saying “reach our community” is a decision. We could focus internally and create a place where people can come in and worship. Or, we can reach out and bring people in.

We’ve spent a lot of time over the last several Transition Team meetings trying to create a mission statement. Over the decades, we’ve spent a lot of time on mission statements.

An oasis for renewal with God and one another

Nurturing passionate followers of Jesus Christ who know God, grow together in Christ, and go and serve South Hill and beyond

I would be lying if I said I enjoy mission statements. My job title is strategy analyst and I’m no stranger to mission statements. In our exercise at Elim, we are looking for a handful of words that describe who we are and what we’re about. Words that will speak to those outside the church and inspire those within. Words that will be a measuring stick for what we do and whether we’re successful.

Within that, we continue to go back to the Great Commission, looking to tie our mission to what Jesus told us, His disciples, to do. This is exceptionally difficult in just a handful of words that speak to those inside and out, that inspire and draw in, that challenge and measure. But I believe the process has been good. This group of 20 plus people are wrestling with the future of our church. Within this, I have been challenged by a number of thoughts.

We value transparency and authenticity. People can see when we’re trying to hide and when we’re not. We want a place that is full of imperfect people building each other up into something better—Christlikeness. We want a place where we can come with all our faults and mistakes and worship the God who knows them and died to forgive them.

One phrase my wife suggested for a mission statement was doing life together. That challenges me deeply. That means not just coming to church on Sunday and serving here or there. It means being an intimate part of other people’s lives. Sharing in their joy and pain, struggles and triumphs. It means bringing others into mine, too.

The last challenge I’ll share is our current assignment to interview community leaders and unchurched people. We have a list of questions to prompt a conversation, but really, we’re going out and talking to people we don’t know and asking them to think about what our little church can do better to serve and reach our community. Challenging. Necessary. Impactful. A first step . . .

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Is Jesus Your Reason for the Season?

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By Bill Naron

Christmas approaching is another reminder that another year is ending. The Christmas season is a great time of year for reorienting our lives around the person and work of Jesus Christ. Now, with only weeks left in the year, I find myself reflecting on the greatest point of growth in our family. One of the things that has tremendously blessed our family is the practice of family discipleship.

In the Scriptures in Deuteronomy 6:7, we are given the command to teach the words and statutes of God diligently to our children. In Ephesians 6:4, fathers are encouraged to not provoke their children to wrath, but to bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. It was through these Scriptures that I realized I needed to more diligently pursue the discipling of my family. As my wife and I have tried to incorporate consistent and purposeful discipleship in the house, we have learned a few valuable lessons.

The first lesson that I have learned when it comes to family discipleship is that it looks different from family to family. This point may not seem so profound, but it has been huge for me. I spent countless numbers of hours online trying to figure out what a strong and successful family discipleship program looks like. I found some resources of liturgical readings, some great hymnal resources for families, and even found some blog posts that were filled with suggestions of how to successfully disciple your family. All of these resources are helpful, but what I have come to realize is that how you disciple is not nearly as important as what you teach.

In a lot of ways, we can become so stuck on making sure that we do something the right way that we miss the point entirely. The Scriptures do not call us to disciple our children in a specific way; rather, the concern is that we teach them the words of God. The goal of family discipleship is that Jesus would be at the center of everything we do. Discipleship takes people and helps them shape their lives around the gospel.

The second lesson that has been extremely valuable to me and my wife is learning to have grace for ourselves when Bible time is inconsistent. None of us are Jesus, and we are not going to hit the mark every single time. It is important that as one attempts to disciple their family that they extend themselves grace. The important thing is to make sure that Jesus is at the center of everything. I know from personal experience that when we attempt to consistently get into the Word as a family, it gets messy. This is because so many things are pulling for our attention.

This brings me to the third lesson that I have learned. In our pursuit of family discipleship, we have learned that we have to intentionally place priority on discipleship. Within the average household, each family member is splitting his or her time several different ways. For this reason, it is important that we set time aside and make sure that it is distraction-free. We typically schedule ours for nighttime, because this is what works best with the rhythm of our house. But this is not the only time it takes place. For instance, our family works through a biblical-character calendar. This allows us to take the character qualities we are learning about and identify real-life applications during our days and weeks.

This is a topic that I have become truly passionate about. I desire to see family discipleship become an integral part of the Church in America. I believe that the call in Deuteronomy 6:7 and the call of Ephesians 6:4 are easy to overlook. However, this is a huge responsibility that is placed on the shoulders of parents. Since we have started doing family discipleship more intentionally, our family has been tremendously blessed. We get to see our children grow in the way that they process spiritual things, and as we learn and teach them, we grow as well.

In closing, I want to leave you, the reader, with some encouragement this holiday season. My encouragement is to take the time you are given this season and commit now to a more diligent approach to family discipleship. I encourage you to figure out how your family discipleship will look. Try different approaches; you will never know how it will work until you try. Remember that it will be messy and inconsistent. It is a growth process for every family, so do not get discouraged. Above all, my encouragement to you, the reader, is to examine what is at the center of your family in an honest way. Ask yourself if your top priority is Jesus and how He shapes your family’s decisions.

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The Antidote for Burnout

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By Larry Short

Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality. (Romans 12:11-13, MSG)

In challenging times such as these, which seem to take an extraordinary level of effort to hold onto whatever hope can be had—when we are tempted to throw in the towel and retreat into ourselves—we seriously need the perspective that the Apostle Paul provides us with in his letter to the Romans.

What is God’s will for us, when we are in danger of burnout? “Keep yourselves fueled and aflame.” And how exactly do we do this?

  1. Realize that we are not the bosses of ourselves! We have a Master. He is calling us to reject cynicism and to be “cheerfully expectant.” He is the God of all hope; and even when we can’t see the sunrise on the horizon, He promises that it is coming. “With God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). We must not quit in hard times, but stick to our commitment to keep on keepin’ on until we see Him finish the good work that He has begun in us and has promised that He will finish (Philippians 1:6).
  2. “Pray all the harder.” I don’t know about you, but I have to confess that I don’t pray all that hard. I can do a lot of things hard—complain hard, lick my own wounds hard, or guard my own self-interests hard. But pray hard? In times when we feel like quitting, God is calling us to pray harder instead.
  3. Help needy Christians. As we walk down this hard-packed path of life, we are surrounded by people with needs. Do we keep our eyes open to those needs, allowing them to touch our hearts? For Jesus, when He saw human need, He had compassion and was moved to action. “Lift your eyes,” He told us, “for the fields are ripe for harvest” (John 4:35). The executive fire chief for Central Pierce County recently told me that the majority of calls his 9-1-1 operators received were not specifically related to emergencies, but were made by lonely, hurting, and desperate people who just needed to connect with people who cared. Are we willing to “lift our eyes” and see these needs around us? Ironically, spending ourselves to help others is a key way to “keep ourselves fueled and aflame.”
  4. And this is one I really think Elim needs to hear. Paul says, “Be inventive in hospitality.” Literally, “pursue hospitality.” Not simply “practice hospitality” or “be hospitable,” but be passionate and creative in pursuit of it! God calls us to open our hearts and lives to those around us who aren’t necessarily “in our circle,” to those who are on the fringe, to outsiders. We are very good at connecting with those inside our circle, but not nearly as good at breaking the circle and inviting others in. The extent to which we will be energetically inventive in hospitality is the extent to which we ourselves will be kept aflame and refueled.

Do you feel like you are out of gas? Close to burnout? Do you want to give up, to retreat, to withdraw? Trust in God’s Word and do the exact opposite of what you feel your “own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5) is calling you to do. Rather than hunker down, hop up and open up your arms to others around you. Embrace a cheerful hope. Pray hard. Invest in helping others. And pursue creative ways to open up your life to those outside your circle!

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What Is Happening with the Transition Team?

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by Pastor Steve McCoy

It has been over five months since I’ve come to serve here. The initial months were filled with interviewing some 124 people.

Starting in the fall, I began working with a 26-person Transition Team. We began by doing a number of analyses and assessments. Currently, we are working on drafting a mission statement. This is a brief, broad, biblical statement of what the church is supposed to be doing. You might call this it a biblical job description for the church. This is a very challenging exercise, but once it is done, it will really help the church to focus on what it needs to do.

A multi-month assignment for the Transition Team is to conduct interviews themselves. I’ve challenged each team member to interview three unchurched people. They have a one-page question sheet to help them connect and discover perceptions of the church.

On top of this, I have challenged each member to conduct three other interviews with school officials, government leaders, business leaders, community leaders, etc. They have another interview form to help them sniff out community needs.

The Transition Team will take about six months. If all goes well, we will finish up in February or March of 2020. After that, we will launch the Pastoral Search Team. The ultimate goal is to help our church find the next pastor.

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