Moving Forward

Moving Forward

We believe that God has a vision for our church and our primary task as leaders is to listen to what God is saying and obediently respond. 

We are learning how to live in this rhythm as a congregation.  I believe that we should cultivate rhythms of leadership that produce predictable results. So, Church Council and Staff are committed to withdrawing for a day-long retreat twice a year to prayerfully listen to God and establish objectives for the next 6 months. We withdrew this weekend on retreat and spent time in prayer, pressing into the Word, and planning.

In other words, we spent the day asking God to show us the stepping stones that reveal our path for the next six months.steppingstones

After each retreat we’ll gather in a town hall meeting with the Effort community to present what we feel like God has revealed to us and ask for input. We are humbly pursuing God and there may be times when we miss something.

We want everyone at Effort to prayerfully consider these objectives and give us some input because we are all on this journey together.

Effort’s leadership team felt strongly that we needed to be learning to tell the story that God wants to speak about Effort. So, we spent some time thinking about our values and mission. We developed the following as a starting point for this conversation.

Mission and Values

Mission:  

Effort serves as a kingdom outpost in a broken world, manifesting and demonstrating kingdom living. We do this by creating a community of love, honor, respect, encouragement and support.

Values:

Effort exists by the power and grace of God alone. We acknowledge that we are beholden to His grace, forgiveness and redemptive work through Jesus Christ so we seek to honor Him and love Him with our whole lives.We are a house of prayer, a people of prayer, seeking to always keep a clear line of communication open with God.We believe in being disciples, lifelong learners of God’s truth through biblically based teaching and fidelity to God’s word. The more we know God, the more seek to make Him known.We believe everyone matters to God, so they matter to us.We believe in being open, honest, friendly, and welcoming.We believe everyone is gifted for service and we will help each other discover, develop, and deploy those gifts.

We believe excellence in all our work honors God, so we do our best.

We believe that transformative work happens in relationships, relationship with God and with one another, so we value relationships.

We believe the joy of the Lord is our strength so we invite, pursue and share joy in worship, in relationships and in community.

We believe we can be united in purpose without uniformity.

We believe we are agents of God’s mission of restoration and reconciliation, so we partner with the Holy Spirit to serve the poor, the oppressed, and the broken-hearted in our community, our country and the world.

6 Month Goals:

1) Learning how to tell the story God wants to tell about Effort by developing our vision, mission, core value statements, and 5 year plan.
2) Developing a cohesive visual identity
3) Develop Discipleship and Leadership Pipelines
4) Focus on Fostering Community through monthly unity events and multiple informal gatherings
5) Hiring for youth and children ministries
6) Develop a comprehensive communications strategy
Take some time to prayerfully consider these values and objectives. Did we miss something? If so, we would like to hear your input at the next Church Council meeting in the Grace Center on Thursday June 19th at 7PM.