Simple Church Team Agenda, April 15

SIMPLE CHURCH TEAM AGENDA. April 15, 2009
6:45-8:00

Prayer

Teaching Time (30 minutes)

• Review where we have been
• 2 Case Studies—take two sample ministries through our simple process

Work Time (35 minutes)

• Begin aligning ministries around our process

Group Needs

Prayer

Results April 1

Opened with Prayer and Teaching Time related to Movement – 2 Cor. 3:18 – Pastor Hugo

Brainstorming ideas / comments – What gets in the way of Movement? What is the Congestion of Simple?

• Tradition – clinging to
• Meaningless tradition
• Burnout, symptoms of burnout
• Not being strategic
• – lack of intentionality
• – lack of focus
• Conflicting / uncoordinated activities
• Lack of alignment
• Focus on strength (should focus on strength)
• Shy away from growth opportunities
• (Get SWOT analysis from Les L.)
• Turf wars
• Lingering concern on certain programs – aligned?
• Lack of alignment, lack of communication, goals not clearly stated.
• We’re in the God business. Pleasing people vs. pleasing God (should be God-pleasing)
• Resource – use unfocused – Time, talent, $ and expertise

Spent remaining time refining the Process in terms of Movement:

• This is Life, not a series of hoops
• Once one reaches a step they are not done.
• Continue running the bases vs. running back to the dugout after touching home plate.

Agenda April 1

2 Cor. 3: 18 And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Prayer

Teaching Time: Movement (20 minutes)
• Congestion is frustrating
• Strategic programming
• Sequential programming

• o Intentional movement
• o Short term steps
• o Capitilize on relationships
• o Consider the Now What?
• o Connect people to groups

• Clear Next steps
• New Member orientation to process

• Jesus’ example

• o The Calling: Luke 5-6 (our “Connect”)
• o The Building: Luke 7-8 (our “Nurture”)
• o The Sending : Luke 9 (our “Empower”)

Working Time (45 minutes)

• Examine/approve changes to wording of process from Sunday AM meeting
• Refine Process in terms of Movement

Group/Sub-group Needs

Prayer

March 25 Results

SIMPLE Church Meeting
March 25, 2009

Pastor opened with prayer.

Teaching Time: Clarity
• Purpose needs to be clearly communicated
• Ambiguity leads to confusion
• What kind of disciple and how to make disciples
• Frequent-when we get tired of talking about it everyone else is just starting to get it
• Brainstorm varied ways to communicate
• Increase understanding corporately and interpersonally
• Live it out internally (i.e. simplify the family)
• Illustrate in various ways: reflect process, show process, help simplify
• “Be a tour guide not a travel agent.”
• Measure and evaluate – horizontally and vertically
• Must become the fabric of the church
• Begin discussing with leadership, key ministries, bible studies

Process Time
• An exercise in Clarity
o Pastor presented document that could be used to help other members of the congregation understand not just how but what we mean by Simple Church
o Discussion revolved around wording of the last cross-point which was reworded to say, “For the sake of making disciples, we will choose to say no lovingly to those ministry and programs outside of our disciple making process.”

• Refining our Process in terms of Clarity – in depth discussion of diagram which is to illustrate the process put together in the meeting on Saturday, March 21
o Joys and rewards should be reflected in each step
o Connect – so as not to seem arrogant or exclusive changed excellent to “fruitful”
o Connect – steps are out of order. Should be 1) clear and frequent, 2) align and equip, 3) personal approach
o Nurture – life-directed – impacting people’s lives
o Nurture – not telling people to be in word but giving them tools
o Nurture – Living Stones bridges gap from Nurturing to Empowering
o Nurture – after much discussion, remove align & equip
o Empower – changed wording to “Clear and frequent communication of the biblical meaning, joys and rewards of discipleship”
o Empower – St Matthew’s role – listening to God’s direction, go beyond National Night Out, remembering we are not the only tool God has in Columbia Heights (i.e. Hispanic ministries)
o Is this good enough?
o Can we measure it?
o Agreed it’s a good definition of being a disciple
o We will test the process by running a ministry from another church in the area through it

General Discussion

• Meet Sunday morning with improvements to either document. Think about simplifying or clarifying.

• Subgroups forming

o Structure – lead by Doug Rosenberg, governance could be lead by Peter Meier
o Calendar – lead by Janet Kendall?
o Worship – lead by Pastor on a weekday (not Monday or Friday)

Pastor closed with prayer.

Agenda March 25

March 25
6:45-8:00

Prayer

Teaching Time (15 minutes)
• Clarity

Work Time (45 minutes)

• An exercise in Clarity

• Refining our Process in terms of Clarity

Group Needs

Prayer

March 21 Results

This past Saturday, March 21, we had a full morning work session in order to begin to put together our process of becoming and being simple for the sake of making disciples. The following is the results. If you would like to see a rough draft summary document, click here.

Designing the Process:

From the CONNECT-NURTURE-EMPOWER categorization, the ‘doors’ which allow people to move from one stage to the next are vital in making the process work. Accordingly, identifying these ‘doors’ –or the movement methods—was our task at this meeting.

From CONNECT to NURTURE

1. Communicate opportunities for growth
2. Communicate an expectation of growth/obedience—annoucements/Newscene, screen, etc.
3. Mentoring/fostering/sponsoring
4. Vary opportunities for next step
5. Personal
6. Track movement
7. All groups promote spiritual growth
8. Create discomfort with non-growth
9. Accountability “buddy system”
10. Welcoming groups; personal also
11. “empty chair” concept
12. Prayer for group growth
13. Looking behind as well as forward

NURTURE steps

1. Expand responsibility of group
2. Communicate opportunity
3. Communicate discipleship –self denial

From NURTURE to EMPOWER

In addition to the above, it will be appropriate to

1. Create Leaders (to move people to Empower stage
2. Living Stones
a. discovering gifts
b. equipping and motivating
3. Create appropriate opportunities that are well designed
4. Communicate rewards and joys
5. Accountability, support, encourage, evaluate, measure

As a result of this total movement, ALL DISCIPLES WILL MAKE DISCIPLES

From EMPOWER to CONNECT

1. Equipped inviters (missionaries)
2. Marketing
3. Facility features—usage opportunities
4. Love
5. Meeting community needs
6. Events
7. Existing ministries

Exercise to narrow and concentrate movement doors:

MOVING from CONNECT to NUTURE
1. People oriented
a. personal/accountability “buddy system” intentional personal connection
b. communicate process in every avenue of contact amongst people

2. Program oriented
a. Educating/training/mentoring/fostering/sponsoring
b. Align and equip ministries toward connecting people

MOVING from NURTURE to EMPOWER
1. People oriented
a. Communicating expectations and opportunities, rewards, joys, fulfillment(what a disciple is)
b. Leadership—development/equipping
1. accountability
2. create appropriate opportunities—growth oriented/transformational
2. Program oriented
a. Teaching
b. Modeling

MOVING from EMPOWER to CONNECT
1 Communication clarity
2. Equipped missionaries
3. Meeting community needs

ANOTHER EXERCISE
Identified which items on the spread sheet of items disciples do daily…et al… that our process constituted so far includes
1. beef up FAMILY NEEDS to be more explicit
2.?????

Additional evaluation needed

Meetings:

March 25 Refine process in terms of Clarity
April 1 Refine process in terms of Movement and Alignment
April 8 No meeting planned
April 15 Refine process in terms of Alignment and Focus

We have begun an attempt to summarize our process. There is now a rough draft of this doscument. It needs to be refined in light of clarity, alignment, movement and focus and be approved by the ministry team. All are encouraged to read it, examine it and give feedback. The document can be found here.

March 18 Results

Simple Church Team Notes

March 18, 2009

1. We discussed modifying the St. Matthew mission statement to:

Making Disciples for Jesus through:

Connecting People

• To God (includes worship)
• To One Another (includes fellowship)
• To Community (includes outreach)

Nurturing People

• Through the Word of God (to bring about faith growth)
• Through Caring Relationships (includes our caring ministries that have been an emphasis of St. Matthew. Includes intentional caring and developing relationships)

Empowering People

• To use all that God has given them for service and disciple-making [not only at St. Matthew, but in their homes, schools, workplaces, neighborhood and world].

2. The six underlying values of Scripture, Grace, Discipleship, Love, Faith and Hope are always incorporated in our mission. For communication purposes so that people are always aware of this, maybe we should also expressly state these values somewhere in the mission or with the mission wherever it is stated.

3. Just nurturing isn’t enough – we need to move people from connecting to nurturing to empowering and then the resulting empowered disciples help make new disciples by connecting, nurturing and empowering new people.

4. There was a concern that our emphasis on family does not exclude or alienate single people.

5. The three main questions St. Matthew should always be asking to evaluate itself are:

• Are we transforming people’s lives?
• Are we investing in people here?
• Are people investing in the church?

6. We discussed possibly describing disciples at St. Matthew as being loving, connecting, nurturing and empowering.

March 18 Agenda

Simple Church Agenda
March 18 6:45-8:00 PM

1 Corinthians 3:12-14 “If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, 13his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. 14If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward.”

Prayer

Teaching Time (20 minutes)

Continuing Discussion of Values, guided by Chapter 5 of Simple Church

Process Time (45 minutes)

• Part 1: A Continuing Look at Values

• Part 2: Disciples at St. Matthew are ________________, __________________, _______________, ________________.

Groups Needs
• Food Saturday?

Prayer

Reminder: We Meet this Saturday, March 21, 9:00-12:00

March 11 Results

SIMPLE Church Meeting
March 11, 2009

Pastor opened with prayer.

Teaching Time & Discussion: Simple Values

• A value is something that is important to you. i.e. meal time with family

• Pastor presented his list of 6 Biblical values which are non-negotiable

Process Time & Discussion: Reflected Values

• Through discussion we came up with the following list of “reflected values” for St. Matthew:

o Caring
o Excellence in Worship
o Spiritual Growth in the Word
o Outreach
o Lay Involvement
o Family Intimacy with God

• This is the rough draft. Further discussion to follow at next meeting.

General Discussion

• Timeline for Becoming Simple (see link on sidebar)

• Following the March 21 meeting sub-groups will develop. Please pray about where you see yourself serving. (Structure & Staffing, Calendar, Worship)

• Next meeting – Wednesday, March 18 6:45 – 8:00

Pastor closed with prayer.

March 11 Agenda

Simple Church Agenda
March 11 6:45-8:00 PM

Prayer

Teaching Time (20 minutes)
Values—Core Biblical values and Reflected Values (see attached)

Process Time (45 minutes) Designing a Simple Process for the Perfect Church (continued).
Taking into account all that we have learned/discussed regarding disciples, what does a Simple Church value? Which 5-8 values need to be weighted at St. Matthew?

Groups Needs
Timeline

Prayer