At its retreat in January, the Session identified three priorities for the coming year. Briefly stated they are:
- Grow our faith through increased participation in new and existing opportunities in Christian Formation
- Serve our community, including identifying a significant Matthew 25 project and resourcing it appropriately
- Spread the Word by developing and implementing a communication plan that tells our story within and outside the church
These priorities are driven by strong verbs reflecting our commitment to be an active church that follows Jesus’ Great Commission to go and make disciples and Micah’s charge to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. The first priority builds on our work to expand Christian Formation beyond Christian Education. Christian formation seeks to form disciples through experiences of worship, fellowship, service, and learning. Its focus is on how we grow into our calling as Jesus’ disciples, a process that continues across our whole lives as the world changes and we change. What might you do or give up doing in order to be a more faithful disciple?
The second priority seeks to expand our outreach to the community, specifically around commitments to the Matthew 25 initiative: address issues of
congregational vitality, systemic poverty, and structural racism. We will continue to do the good work that we are doing in our community and beyond, but we will also look for new possibilities to address those challenging Matthew 25 initiatives that focus on the systems and structures of societal problems and our collective response to them. Where do you see new possibilities for us to address these issues in our community?
The third priority is a variation on the E-word that Presbyterians tend to utter only in a whisper – EVANGELISM. We are called to share the good news with one another and with the world, and this year we hope to be more intentional about sharing what we are doing as Christ’s church in this place and inviting others to participate. Telling the story includes our individual stories but also our collective story, and that telling takes many forms including expanded use of technology, social media, and pictures. What is the story that you have to tell of what God is doing in and through us here at Covenant?
Keep your eyes and ears open in the coming months for more about these foci in our congregational life and opportunities for you to participate, for these priorities are all about faithfully being Christ’s church in this place – together!
— John Peterson
