When I joined the Parkview ministry team in January of 1999, we were a church of 800 worshiping in what is now known as the chapel. It was an exciting time and the following five or six years resulted in an explosion of attendance to a peak of 1,800 attenders a weekend. All throughout this time the staff and elders were aggressively working to update our staffing and strategy to better accommodate this growth and the complexity of managing a church that had grown at such a high rate of speed. Though we have been encouraged by seeing so many lives changed by the gospel and so many people motivated to serve the Lord in ministry, we have also struggled to adapt and communicate a vision that has kept us completely unified and informed as to where God is leading us into the future. This is a challenging place to be, but also a very healthy place to be. We are being forced to really depend upon the Lord and seek him for clear direction and guidance for our future.
All this is why I am very excited about our future Elder and Pastor retreat on February 11th and 12th. We will be spending our time attempting to refine and unify our vision as a leadership and church. I ask that all of you please join the elders and staff in praying that the Lord would guide and direct our upcoming time together. We will be joined by Aubrey Malphurs who is a professor at Dallas Seminary and an experienced advisor in helping churches increase effectiveness in ministry. His presence at our retreat should provide a valuable third party perspective that will help us identify weakness and build upon strengths. Thanks again for your prayers and for being part of the greatest mission on earth, to invite more and more people to a life changing relationship with Jesus Christ!
2 comments:
I'm looking forward to this. My "dream retreat" would be:
1. We go away somewhere for a night (just because I think you get more focused that way & grow together).
2. We spend a big part of the time before we start talking strategy praying and fasting (I have a friend who's staff is doing that, actually a day of silence, b/f they talk about vision/direction).
3. We put *everything* on the table and honestly evaluate who we are, how we are uniquely situated in Iowa City, how each of the staff/leaders are uniquely gifted, and how we can get "on mission" (or missio Dei in my understanding).
Is that too much to ask for? :)
I'm honestly excited about what we are doing, but that would be my dream pastor/elder retreat.
Keep dreaming dreams Josh. Maybe it will happen one day. :)
Retreats to get away, seek the Lord, strategize, and openly evaluate should be regular/annual events. I've never been to one where there wasn't a great sense of unity and direction after taking the time to make it happen.
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