We are about to wrap up the first half of the year here at the church, and I wanted to give everyone an update about our strategic planning we are doing here at the church. As you may remember, we are working under a new mission statement, "trying it on for size" right now and hopefully fully approving it at the next charge conference in the Fall. For those who have not memorized it yet, here is the statement: Connect. Grow. Serve. Transform lives through Jesus Christ. Also we have adopted five core values that we believe will help us live into our mission statement. These core values: Grace, Humility, Restoration, Accountability, and Intentionality. We will be sharing a series on these in the month of July, and we hope that you will be a part of this series, as Daniel, Shinia and I will be sharing with you what the bible says about these values.
As far as the future planning goes, the Ministry Planning Team is working in four areas: Connect, Grow, Serve, and Administration. Connect - which has to do with worship, evangelism and fellowship - is working on improvements in worship, focusing on ambiance and flow, especially with our contemporary worship celebration. We are also working on ways in which we can make our traditional celebration more traditional, and our contempoarary celebration, well, more contemporary. Grow - which has to do with spiritual formation of all ages - is working on an adult small group cirriculcum tied to the worship subject material, improvements to youth and children areas, and adding new Sunday school classes. Serve - which has to do with ministry, missions and recovery - will begin work on a fall emphasis campaign called "Do Something!" that will conclude with our Hearts and Hammers week in October. On the Admistration front, we are working on a restructuring of the church which will emulate our mission statement and eliminate unnecessary committees. Moreover, an emphasis would be placed on working teams, that would, upon completion of a task, be disbanded. We believe this will make our church administration more productive and at the same time allow members to be more involved in ministry rather than committees. As always, if you have any questions or if you have any ideas, you can contact Shinia or I and we would love to talk with you about future plans. We will also have another town hall meeting at the end of July or beginning of August to continue to share the plan being developed.
I hope that you are having a great summer, and look forward to what the future holds for our church, knowing that the Spirit is alive and well at First Methodist Hallsville.
