Values Clarification brings rewards. Let me back up: The Rock La Roca needs to shift to being a community-based church, a church for its neighborhood. Not a mission station, not a place where people come from somewhere else to do ministry to the neighbors. But that is a hard shift, because our bread and butter has been attracting people from outside to come in and be part of things here. It was a good start, but now we are at the place where we can enter into the neighborhood, seeking the people who live here as partners in, not objects of, ministry.
The tension arises when, in making the shift, and you’re in no-man’s land, and the community people are not quite here and the “old guard” is feeling dissatisfied, it looks like nothing is going to work.
It’s at that moment that you have to make sure that you stick with where you are going. The point about values clarification is that you move to where you want to be, you don’t stay where you’ve been.
The first big issue it seems that we face is not identifying the leaders for the church from the community. We look to the same people to do the work, we seek to do what we’ve been doing, all the while missing that we need to look for and welcome leaders from the neighborhood.
In children and youth ministry, it means seeking parents to grow into leadership. Already, we have found some who have vision and desires for the work among the children of the neighborhood.
In mission, it will mean opening up leadership and development of programs to people who need the help we can give.
Where it has most hit me is in evangelism. Community congruence—the idea that the church is in dialogue with the community to develop ministries and worship—means that somehow, the church has to know about the community. Who better than the folks who live there? My friend Cliff has stepped up, asking to go out with me to do evangelism. We have been building a relationship for two years now, and it is bearing fruit in real friendship. It doesn’t surprise me; Cliff is what Jesus called a “man of peace” (e.g. Luke 10:5-7). Jesus’ plan was so simple, no one believes it. Go visit, find the people receptive, and build on them.
I hope that one day we can turn over the church to leadership from the neighborhood. It’s a hard task, but the right direction. The change has already brought turmoil and turnover, hard feelings, even. Birth is painful; but this time has also already brought new life.
1 comment:
Oh man, you have got to read Alan Hersch's book The Forgotten Ways. he will be coming to the KY UMC at clergy school, and he speaks about bring about this new "value" through the use of a new story that alows others to live into the story and it becomes alive in the lives of the neighborhood and those living missionally. Good stuff, just hope that there are a bunch of people that attend his day session.
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