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Our Church’s leadership team began to look at the draft of a new set of by-laws tonight.  While there was some initial confusion as to the purpose and scope of a set of bylaws or Constitution, I believe the discussion went well.  We made it through three of the ten pages in the time allotted.  We will look at it again in two weeks.

Our primary concern is to create structures for our congregational life that will empower us to be disciples of Jesus Christ and live out the Great Commandment (love God, love others), and the Great Commission (make disciples).  So far, we think we are achieving that end. 

Please pray for us as we continue to work through this process!

Church budgets are often the hardest parts of a church to transform in a process of congregational change.  Budget categories are notoriously resiliant and resistant to change.  Even groupings of line items often stay together in configurations that must have made historical sense at one time but are now baffling to the present.  Even more significantly, it is hard to translate the traditional budget categories (personnel, building, utilities, office supplies and other operating expenses) into categories that reflect the vision of where the congregation is going matched to the ways in which the vision is going to be carried out. 

Today, I designed a model to help our congregation begin to measure our budget along missional lines.  At this point, all of our active programs and activities have generally fallen in line behind the vision:

Our vision is to be a community of disciples of Jesus Christ, who invite, equip and empower others to be Jesus’ disciples. 

We desire to be a community of disciples through seven basic areas:

Worship, Proclamation, Formation, Service, Prayer, Care and Fellowship.

Thus, I began to divide up my time and the use of the building along those seven lines plus Administration.  The math on the building use has been quite complex, but it ended up coming out pretty well today.  These numbers were all tied in with the more obvious stuff - like BIble study guide costs, etc., and linked to form a missional presentation of the budget. 

In the end, I was able to create a pie chart based upon the seven aspects of our mission plus administration, that showed our budget distributed according to our vision.  As we grow, we will make adjustments to the various parts of the budget to try to reflect our visionary priorities.

Any feedback?

 See the yellow-ish tinge on the tree in the picture?  It’s about to burst into bloom.  All the other trees on the street are still vertical brushpiles, but this one - it’s ready to go.  That’s about where our congregation is right now.  We are slowly, surely becoming a missional congregation.  We can see that once this thing blooms, it’s really going to bloom.  Now, we just have to wait for it to mature enough to bloom. 

Our Worship is becoming more reverently relaxed and celebratory.  Our Men’s and Women’s Formation Groups are growing.  Our prayers are still leading us into greater realization of God’s vision.  We’re learning how to care for one another.  We’re probably one revision away from having a workable new set of bylaws that can be shown to the congregation at large for feedback and ratification sometime in the near future.  Last Sunday, a man who just got sober at the Warren Family Mission gave his (powerful, moving) testimony.  He has been accepted and welcomed into the life of the Church.  It’s looking more and more likely that our stuff for Teens and Children will be re-started by the early summer. 

We’ve had some serious pruning, to be sure.  But that will make the new growth all the more plentiful, as the roots go down deep to nourish it. 

Praise Be to God!