More at stake

Jesus says, "There is far more at stake here than religion. If you had any idea what this Scripture meant—'I prefer a flexible heart to an inflexible ritual'—you wouldn't be nitpicking like this."

There's a lot of nitpicking that happens in churches. Let's keep the main thing the main thing: anticipating Christ's coming and loving people into his kingdom.

Then Jesus goes all hardcore again, "This is war, and there is no neutral ground. If you're not helping, you're making things worse."

You can either be a part of the solution or a part of the problem. We discovered at Mutual Ministry last night that I came in to a situation of acute anxiety in January. The three major contributors being...
1. Budgetary difficulties
2. The loss of a pastor
3. The closing of a school

Thinking I was being a part of the solution (old school butts and bucks mindset), I set out to grow the church. Two more anxiety increasing factors were introduced:
1. An influx of new members
2. A significant change in lay leadership (we slightly re-structured to empower leaders more)

Now we have 5 anxiety producing situations which we need to work together to resolve. Here are my proposals for how to "take it down a thousand," so that there is peace and calm (that way we will be able to think clearly so we can plan and vision):
1. Budgetary difficulties--After a rough start, we have essentially broken even for the last 6 or 7 months. A good pledge drive in the next 12 days will help us thrive in this area. Please sign up for Simply Giving or turn in your pledge card.
2. The loss of a pastor--Members who were here when PJ was the pastor need to work through any grief they still have over his leaving. It's completely natural to experience separation anxiety when a much loved pastor retires.
3. The closing of a school--The Faith Center was essentially vacant from Sept 1st, 2009-Aug 15th, 2010. We have been leasing it another religious group since and hopefully will sell it soon. This will certainly help in the first area. My fervent hope is that we are willing to see outside of ourselves and tithe off of the proceeds.
4. An influx of new members--15 families have had members join this year. We are actively working to match them up with "mentor" households before Jan 9th in order to integrate them into the life of the church more fully. If you come every Sunday, please support this effort by being one of those households.
5. A significant change in lay leadership--People are using their spiritual gifts. We are gaining some stability on Council. The challenge is to appoint Council members to our Executive team in February who can lead us through the Doing What Matters synod process over the next two and a half years.

Probably more than you wanted to read in a blog, but in order to move forward, we need to be intentional about "being a part of the solution," reducing anxiety in each of these areas. Having flexible hearts will definitely help.