Key Value 1 - Sermon Notes
Give time and effort to value and empower each member of our Church family.
VicarMike
The first of our ‘Key Values’ as a church – discerned following an evening of prayer, a leadership away day and a follow up evening. As we initially met to pray we were presented with a couple of human figures onto which we were to put ‘post it’ notes expressing, in prayer, what we felt were important to us as a church. When later these were analyzed it was quickly evident that by far the most important characteristic of our church is that we are ‘Family’. We already understand that Biblically as the Body of Christ who worship together at St Andrew’s but it was good to see it was something many people thought was key to our identity. It also seems to be the experience of many who come into our church to worship on occasional visits or at one of the occasional services or ‘life event’ occasional services we hold.
Primarily then we would want our church to always represent that close family unit that it does presently. Within families there are ups and downs and such occasional disagreements would not diminish the sense that we are nevertheless a family. In addition to this sense of unity it was felt that every member of our church family has a unique set of gifts, natural and Spiritual and whereas many are using theirs to the full others may not be. This might be because they don’t know what their gifts are or are ill equipped to know how to use them or where to use them. So part of what we would like to be known for, would involve giving people the opportunity to discover their gifting and then to be offered a chance to learn how best to use those gifts. Even with our natural gifts many of them could easily be used for the benefit of the church family (i.e. artistic, musical, floral, gardening etc.). Each of us, as children of our Father in heaven, also have Spiritual gifts. Learning what these might be and how then to use them would possibly mean a training session on Spiritual gifts which we would happily run. Maybe it becoming something we do from time to time as new members are added to our number.
As part of a family we contribute our love and respect for each other, our financial commitment to the whole, our natural gifting and our Spiritual gifts. We would like to see every member being fully empowered to play the significant part they can play in our Church family.
The first of our ‘Key Values’ as a church – discerned following an evening of prayer, a leadership away day and a follow up evening. As we initially met to pray we were presented with a couple of human figures onto which we were to put ‘post it’ notes expressing, in prayer, what we felt were important to us as a church. When later these were analyzed it was quickly evident that by far the most important characteristic of our church is that we are ‘Family’. We already understand that Biblically as the Body of Christ who worship together at St Andrew’s but it was good to see it was something many people thought was key to our identity. It also seems to be the experience of many who come into our church to worship on occasional visits or at one of the occasional services or ‘life event’ occasional services we hold.
Primarily then we would want our church to always represent that close family unit that it does presently. Within families there are ups and downs and such occasional disagreements would not diminish the sense that we are nevertheless a family. In addition to this sense of unity it was felt that every member of our church family has a unique set of gifts, natural and Spiritual and whereas many are using theirs to the full others may not be. This might be because they don’t know what their gifts are or are ill equipped to know how to use them or where to use them. So part of what we would like to be known for, would involve giving people the opportunity to discover their gifting and then to be offered a chance to learn how best to use those gifts. Even with our natural gifts many of them could easily be used for the benefit of the church family (i.e. artistic, musical, floral, gardening etc.). Each of us, as children of our Father in heaven, also have Spiritual gifts. Learning what these might be and how then to use them would possibly mean a training session on Spiritual gifts which we would happily run. Maybe it becoming something we do from time to time as new members are added to our number.
As part of a family we contribute our love and respect for each other, our financial commitment to the whole, our natural gifting and our Spiritual gifts. We would like to see every member being fully empowered to play the significant part they can play in our Church family.