February 6, 2025
“What’s your story?”
Have you ever been asked that question? What do you think people mean? Implicit in this question is the idea that your story captures an essence of who you are and where you currently are in life. For the next year, as a church, we are going to be asking the question: “What is our story?”
As you all probably know, the Vision & Navigation Team has been engaging in a visioning process called Dawnings. At the heart of Dawnings are two essential questions:
- “God, what are you calling us to do now?”
- “God, who are you calling us to be now?”
Dawnings takes place in three stages:
- Stage One: a Dawnings Leadership Retreat. This took place in August 2024 with the members of the Vision & Navigation Team and some other leaders from the church.
- Stage Two: a sermon series on calling. During last Fall, you might remember that I preached a series called Kaleo (the Greek word for “called”).
- Stage Three: A series of four, congregation-wide conversations around the idea of story:
- What is my story?
- What is our church’s story?
- What is our community’s story?
- How does all this fit into God’s story?
We are calling these each of these four conversations a “Story Sunday” and the first one is taking place on Sunday, February 16 at 9:00-10:30 AM in the Fellowship Hall. We will meet together for an intergenerational Sunday Bible Study that I will lead. Members of the VNT and others will also serve as Table Leaders and will guide folks through some questions, prayer, and discussion together as we explore God’s calling on each of our lives.
On that Sunday, we will have simplified worship for both services, all Sunday Bible Study classes are invited to participate in the intergenerational class, and we will not have Sunday afternoon activities. These are important conversations about who we are as a church and I hope to see you there as we talk about what it means for God to shape us as a people into the next season of ministry together.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or the Chair of the Vision & Navigation Team, Jay Van Nostrand.
