Who Are We?
We understand how we fit together as a body
John Doty: Look at what you’ve got
Everyone is here for a reason
We are the results of outreach
We’re primarily a church of young adults who know God
What kind of people do we attract? What kind of people should we attract? How do we attract these people?
undergrads
graduate students
young families
young couples
young single people
middle-aged families
older families/couples
other?
What are we good at? Let us stick to it!
Do we have a “Dare me to worship” attitude
Do we come to church only for ourselves?
What Can We Do? What questions we should ask?
How do we make Cornerstone a place that people want to call their home church?
This concern keeps coming up
How do we balance attacking v not approaching newcomers
How do we decide who does and doesn’t want to remain anonymous?
Spread ourselves throughout to church to give newcomers more opportunities to intermingle with us
Come to church with a passion for all things happening at the church...personal excitement
What other types of worship could we try?
How do we follow up on meeting people?
Change our mission statement: We are a welcoming church full of friendships. We are here to strengthen our relationship with God and knowledge of the Bible.
Give each other feedback
It is crucial that you let us know what isn’t working for you. A song, an attitude, something that is missing...
Comments for music team: Constructive criticism
Prayer before worship...Don’t rush in
Connect Bible verses to songs
Which key result areas should we focus on, if any? How and why?
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
All-Church Meeting 1/25
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In reflecting and thinking about the meetings that we have been having there are a couple of things that have come to mind for me. It has been encouraging to see the desire to meet, to grow as a body, to learn from each other, and to try to understand what God has for us. That said I think that there are a couple of underlying factors that we might want to think about based on what our meetings have revolved around. I feel like a lot of what we have talked about at our meetings are surface issues that are easy to see but may be only touching the tip of what is going on. In order to try and help facilitate what I am getting at, I have tried to organize some of the issues, in the list that was sent out in the email, into groups and suggest possible underlying factors (in bold).
Who we are in God’s eyes and what does He have for us
-Who Are We?
-How do we fit together?
-What is our reason for being together in this church?
-What kind of people do we attract? What kind of people should we attract? How do we attract these people?
-What are we good at? Let us stick to it!
-What Can We Do? (Questions we should ask.)
-Change our mission statement: We are a welcoming church full of friendships. We are here to strengthen our relationship with God and knowledge of the Bible.
-Which key result areas should we focus on, if any? How and why?
Selfish/Lazy Sunday
-Do we have a “Dare me to worship” attitude
-Do we come to church only for ourselves?
-Come to church with a passion for all things happening at the church...personal excitement
-It is crucial that you let us know what isn’t working for you. A song, an attitude, something that is missing... This may also need to be looked at without the “you” focus but a focus that is dependent on what God wants for us.
-Spread ourselves throughout to church to give newcomers more opportunities to intermingle with us
Numbers
-How do we make Cornerstone a place that people want to call their home church?
-How do we balance attacking v not approaching newcomers?
-How do we decide who does and doesn’t want to remain anonymous?
-How do we follow up on meeting people?
These three issues seem to be central to what is going on in our meetings. In thinking more about what is going on it seems like these three can all be related to another key issue. At first glance it may seem like it is possible to link them to the selfishness topic (which sounds harsher than I would like) but in thinking about it more I would suggest that it may be more related to the first issue of “Who we are in God’s eyes and what does He have for us”. This is a complex issue, but I feel like it is at the heart of what are meetings are for and about. As a quick example of this: it may be hard for people to be excited about what else is going on in the church if they do not know what they are doing in the church; it may be an issue that people come looking for something for themselves because they do not understand what role they have and how they can serve God while at church, and it is possible that people that come to Cornerstone could see a church united and working together where they would be interested in being involved.
I think we can all agree that we are trying to follow what God has for us as a church, especially by the fact that we are taking the time and showing the effort to meet. I think the issues listed above seem to show an underlying issue of a lack of an understanding for what we are doing as a church. I have taught Sunday school with kindergartners before and it was always a fun experience of trying to get answers to questions when their response would always be “Jesus.” I am curious as to whether we are answering the question of who we are in the same way by saying that we are a church that loves God and is a body that has been brought together by God. This is not to say that the answer of “Jesus” is a poor answer or even that it is not a great answer, but there is so much more going on, and we may benefit from not only trying to understand this but also to put it up front so we all know what we are doing.
I think the idea of changing or working with the mission statement is a great one. Mission and vision statements play huge roles in business and I think that some of the reasoning for that can be taken for what we are looking to do. First, I think it is important to understand why we have a mission statement and what it is for. Is it for people outside the church to see so they can understand what we are about? Is it for the body of our church to see so that we know what our focus is? Is it something that the body of our church looks to when making decisions and reconciling conflict? Second, I would also like to suggest that we should differentiate between a vision statement and a mission statement or even a values statement. I think that a vision, mission, or values statement have the ability to focus the people following it, bring clarity to what is trying to be done, and allow for a signpost to be put up for what we are trying to do.
It may be possible that by clearing up who we are and what we are about people will become more passionate about what is going on at Cornerstone and be more excited about giving of themselves for the church. It may also be that from the unity of knowing who we as a body are in Christ that the people that come to visit Cornerstone see what we have and become interested in being a part of it. I am very excited to see what God has done, is doing, and will do.
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