When was the last time you were confronted with a challenge that required you to rethink your usual approach and try something different?

This is the question that we as a leadership team have been wrestling with for the last few months, as we look at the challenges in our community and our call to love those most missed by Jesus.

Rather than retreating or sticking with the status quo we want to refresh our objectives and methods that help further our mission. We are embarking on, over the next year, a process of reframing of our vision, redefining our mission, and restructuring of our supportive systems to bring greater focus to our existence as a church.

It starts with examining a fundamental question:

Who are we, as a church?

If you haven't already heard, this conversation will start in earnest on Sunday, June 13th, during our normal worship service time-slot.

If you'd like to contribute to the conversation via email, send your thoughts to:

vision@irvingtoncov.org

Below are some questions* we will be asking and answering together, over the next season, to uncover our unique identity:

LOCAL NEEDS AND OPPORTUNITIES:

o What burning issues are alive in the public’s eye and brought to attention by the local media?

o Because of our specific location, what solution could we provide that no other church does?

o What is the most significant change in our community in the last decade, and what does this need create?

o What one positive change in our community would have the most dramatic effect in people’s lives?

COLLECTIVE STRENGTH POTENTIAL:

o If a guest visited several times and answered the question, “what did you like best about this church,” what would they say? -- OR -- If you were bringing a friend to our church for the first time, what singular promise (that is, what will she receive or experience from coming) would you be willing to make?

o If our church was immediately uprooted from the community, what would people in the community feel was missing?

o Who’s coming to church? How does ethnicity, age, gender, life stage, and spiritual maturity define our congregation’s makeup? -- OR – What capabilities or spiritual gifts seem prominent or tend to cluster in our church?

o What is the most significant ministry inside our church? What is the most significant ministry we do outside our church?

ENERGIZING MINISTRY DRIVE:

o What would you want said at your funeral? List three things that reflect, “Who you were.”

o What have you secretly believed that you would be really good at if only given the chance? OR What do others say that you’re good at?

o What one thing bothers you most about the world?

*these questions are part of our approach to the Vision Pathway process, adapted from the book Church Unique by Will Mancini of Auxano.