| I wanted to share with our church family my report to our recent annual Church Conference. We have much to celebrate, and I wanted you to celebrate with me, especially as 2012 has kicked off in such a great way, continuing to expand on our life together in 2011.
Senior Pastor’s Report to Church Conference
January 22, 2012, 3:00 PM
One of the things that is increasingly difficult is to report on the life and mission of First Methodist Church. Our life together has many levels defined by eight successful worship services, a well developed care ministry program, mission that expands locally and worldwide consistently, ongoing, very effective children’s, student and family ministries and now our newly developed discipleship program called The Journey. Our worship attendance has increased to just a few short of 2,200 in all our services, we had 174 professions of faith (I am thrilled at this), our membership is approaching the 7,000 level, we added 417 new members in 2011 and our God Is Big Enough campaign spread the simple, yet powerful, good news far beyond our borders. As one child said simply and beautifully, “We are the God Is Big Enough church.” I like this.
Daily we provide counseling in almost every category for people. We share a GPS Bible study that impacts almost 1,000 every day. Our church is the church of choice for many when they need a hospital visit, someone to serve them during times of grief, to share with them when they get married or if they are looking for resources to help them in time of emotional or financial crisis. We baptize infants almost every week, and there are few weeks that go by when we don’t baptize an adult in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Our lay chaplains, Stephen Ministers, pastors and Wesley Mission Center staff extend our ministry deeply into this community. Our many worship opportunities allow people to engage God at different times and in different venues, including Celebrate Recovery for those dealing with recovery issues. When we add to this our G-Force children’s worship and our worship services in The Loft for students, all ages and people from all kinds of background and with all kinds of needs have a place to connect with God and experience Jesus Christ.
We have a great staff and great leaders. The biblical story tells us that God most often works through leaders of faith. We have this. I am honored to work with the pastors, staff and lay leadership of First Methodist Church. As our community becomes more diverse, our staff leadership is becoming more diverse as well. I think it is important that those who lead a church reflect the makeup of the community we serve. I think we are doing this better and better, and we are beginning to see this reflected in our church family. As we prepare to reach those who are on their way (I think a church should always build around those yet to come), we are taking some positive steps to do this ? in our variety of services, mission ministries, children’s ministries and in our spaces and staff. We are preparing for a mission to come as we celebrate our mission today.
We will continue to develop staff and strategy around our goals to “make disciples who love God, love others and serve the world.” We will also restructure our strategy and systems as needed to ensure we are on the cutting edge of this mission; targeting the way our commissions work will be a project this year. We want our lay leadership to have the opportunity to lead, to be deeply involved in our daily mission in the church, as well as their daily mission at home, work and neighborhood. When asked why our church works, I often answer, “It is not because we have the best programs and worship but because we have a church family willing to bend the knee to Jesus Christ.” As we have learned to follow Christ together, we have discovered ourselves doing and being more than we might have imagined. |
