What do we want to take into the future from the present crisis?
Each life is shaped by a series of defining moments. Sometimes, these crucial episodes are a single, unpredicted hour within our lives. Sometimes, they are seasons.
It is true that every day of our lives matters, but they do not all have equal weight in shaping the person we will be in the future. For good or ill, our lives are marked by a handful of significant moments.
The same holds true for churches. Each church is defined by key events or periods of time that have uniquely impacted the shaping of the values, beliefs, and practices that it now embodies. The church that you lead has been deeply imprinted by a few defining moments of the past – many of which have little to do with the present, and nothing to do with the future.
But it is an exceedingly rare occasion when both people and institutions all face the same defining moment together. A moment like that calls for a courageous church leadership to become ruthlessly honest about its current state, equally frank about the conditions of the mission field, and then audacious enough to ask the most candid question of all: “How should this shared moment prepare us to become Jesus’ church for the present-future?”
Since we know that this is a defining moment, and we know that this moment is changing both us and the churches that we lead, let me ask a more approachable question: “What do we want to take into the future from the present crisis?”
We at the Send Institute, with our colleagues at Christ Together, have been leading coaching cohorts with over 1,500 churches of numerous denominations across North America, and additionally, dozens of global networks, in order to assist pastors and network leaders in navigating the present crisis into ...
from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2wX1Yfa
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