Steering Team Preparation Instructions

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Steering Team Preparation Instructions

• Phase 1 Corporate Spiritual Discernment
  Conversations

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Reflection Why?

• Conversation is important
• People in your congregation need to talk together
  about your discoveries.
• You need time to discover together that there are
  no rights or wrong answers.
• Without dialogue and reflection the reports will
  not be valuable to the congregation.
• The reports are tools that invite the
  congregation to step back from plans and
  solutions to talk with one another about what God
  is up to in the rich responses of the reports.
• Corporate Spiritual discernment conversation lets
  you get under the surface.

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Purpose of the Corporate Spiritual Discernment

• How we make important decisions as a church says
  a lot about us.
• How do we determine Gods call to us in a
  particular situation?
• How you answer questions as a grouphow you
  decide and act on our decisions tells the world
  who you are as the People of God.

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Basic Convictions

• God is alive and active in the world
• Knowing Scripture its stories, symbols, heroes,
  and examples of God in action gives us a way to
  identify God in action now.
• The guidance the Holy Spirit gives us now will
  not contradict what we know about Jesus through
  Scripture
• God is in mission the world, and God calls,
  centers, and sends the church to participate in
  that mission.

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Basic Convictions

• Gods mission has a unique role for the church in
  the world.
• Knowing and doing are interrelated.
• Putting ourselves and the future of the church
  completely into the hands of God brings freedom,
  creativity, and adventure.
• Practicing spiritual discernment is a way of
  doing theology together as a congregation.

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What have you learned as a Steering Team?

• What has God been up to in our local church and
  community the church lives within and serves?
• How has God been at work in our history? In our
  neighbors history?
• What is God at work on right now?

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Leading the Conversation
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Three major products

• Congregational Timeline
• The Congregational Discovery Report
• The Church Future Finder Report

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Congregational Timeline

• Summarize history
• Note patterns
• Of behavior
• Comings and goings
• Ebbs and flows
• Activities
• High and low points

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Congregational Discovery

• Summarize the inside culture of the congregation
• How people behave with one another
• How people inside the congregation view worship,
  nurture, conflict, the future, the community and
  other things

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Church Future Finder

• Summarize how the interior of the congregation
  fits within the exterior community God has placed
  around them.
• Community information
• Interests, changes, traffic, symbols
• Anything that might help discern the Missional
  vocation in and with the community

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How do we present the documents?

• Suggestions
• Summarize the information using the suggestions
  in Local Church Guide for Cluster Event 2
• Present information at the meeting via written
  documents, powerpoint, video, or drama.
• Present information prior to meeting newsletter
  after church gatherings- webpage -
• Power Point presentations
• Video presentation
• Webpage document

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Corporate Spiritual DiscernmentWho participates?

• Small groups 6 -10 people
• Can be done all at once or over a period of
  several weeks.
• Large Group with smaller breakout groups

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Process

• Dwelling in the Word ( 25-30 min)
• Philippians 127, 2 5 -11
• State Purpose ( 2 min)
• Question of the Day ( 2 min)
• Reporting of Steering Team (30 -40 min)
• Move to small groups ( 60 min)
• The Box
• The Triangle
• The Dwelling Passage Again
• The Floated Conversation
• Summary Report and Closing ( 20 -40 min)

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Dwelling in the Word

• Philippians 127, 2 5-11
• 27 Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the
  gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see
  you or am absent and hear about you, I will know
  that you are standing firm in one spirit,
  striving side by side with one mind for the faith
  of the gospel
• 25Let the same mind be in you that was in
  Christ Jesus, 6who, though he was in the form
  of God,   did not regard equality with God   as
  something to be exploited, 7but emptied
  himself,   taking the form of a slave,   being
  born in human likeness.And being found in human
  form, 8   he humbled himself   and became
  obedient to the point of death   even death on
  a cross.

• 9Therefore God also highly exalted him   and
  gave him the name   that is above every name,
  10so that at the name of Jesus   every knee
  should bend,   in heaven and on earth and under
  the earth, 11and every tongue should
  confess   that Jesus Christ is Lord,   to the
  glory of God the Father.

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PurposeWhy is this conversation Important?

• 1. We need to talk together about our discoveries
  in the PMC process.
• 2. We need time to discover togheter that there
  are no right or wrong answers to arm ourselves
  for. We are instead taking up the work of
  discerning Gods preferred and promised future
  for us.
• 3. Without thoughtful conversation and spiritual
  discernment, all of this work maybe useless to
  the congregation
• 4. Conversation lets us get under the surface to
  press the deeper questions What is God up to
  here? And What is Gods preferred and promised
  future for our congregation and community?

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Question of the Dayuse only ONE question to
focus on for the meeting

• Who are the people in our neighborhood that God
  is calling us to learn from and work with?
• What might God be calling our church to be and to
  do in Gods mission in our neighborhood/community?
  
• What gifts is God calling us to use in
  accomplishing Gods preferred and promised future
  in this location and time?
• Which relationships that we now have are critical
  for developing the new relationships God is
  calling us to?

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The BOX

• Attend To listen to someone in and beyond words
• Assert to speak honestly, without apology or
  domination
• Decide to make a communal or personal decision,
  to come to terms with an issue
• Act to live out our faith in the world action
  will be the fruit of this conversation

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Additional information about the BOX

• Attend listen deeply to one another
• Assert speaking openly and honestly without
  dominating
• Decide discern together the sense of your group
• Act returning a summary of your reflection to
  the large group

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Mutual Invitationdeveloped by Rev. Eric Lawuse
for Floated Conversation

• Read the following directions In order to ensure
  that everyone who wants to share has the
  opportunity to speak, we will proceed in the
  following way. The leader/convener will share
  first. After that person has spoken, he or she
  invites another person to share. The person whom
  you invite does not need to be the person next to
  you. After the next person has spoken, that
  person is given the privilege to invite another
  person to share. If the person invited does not
  wish to say anything, that person simply says
  "pass" and proceeds to invite another to share.
  This process is followed until everyone has been
  invited to speak.

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The TriangleThis is a time for brainstorming

• Tradition
• The Scriptures, confessions, music, art, worship
  and prayer, the democracy of the dead
• Society and Culture
• Human institutions and the values that grow them
• Experience of the Faithful
• Personal and community experience with an issue

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The Triangleuse flip chart for brainstorming

• 5 Minutes Tradition What have we learned
  about our tradition around scripture, art,
  worship, prayer, and those who have come before
  us.
• 5 minutes Society and Culture What have we
  learned about our values, our connections/partners
  , our culture as a congregation and our
  relationship with our neighbors
• 5 minutes Experience of the Faithful what has
  been our Personal Experience What has been our
  Community experience both as a congregation and
  in relationship with our neighborhood.

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Four Basic Rules of Brainstorming

• Focus on quantity This rule is a means of
  enhancing divergent production, aiming to
  facilitate problem solving through the maxim,
  quantity breeds quality. The assumption is that
  the greater the number of ideas generated, the
  greater the chance of producing a radical and
  effective solution.
• Withhold criticism In brainstorming, criticism
  of ideas generated should be put 'on hold'.
  Instead, participants should focus on extending
  or adding to ideas, reserving criticism for a
  later 'critical stage' of the process. By
  suspending judgment, participants will feel free
  to generate unusual ideas.
• Welcome unusual ideas To get a good and long
  list of ideas, unusual ideas are welcomed. They
  can be generated by looking from new perspectives
  and suspending assumptions. These new ways of
  thinking may provide better solutions.
• Combine and improve ideas Good ideas may be
  combined to form a single better good idea, as
  suggested by the slogan "113". It is believed
  to stimulate the building of ideas by a process
  of association.

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Floated ConversationGroup leader

• You will need flip charts and a recorder/timer.
• Use the Box for ground rules for conversation or
  mutual invitation
• Pick up on Brainstorming ideas
• Some questions to ask
• What missional gifts have we discovered God has
  given us?
• What are we learning?
• What strikes you?
• What gives you pause?
• What surprises you?
• Come back to the Question of the Day

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Following Floated ConversationBACK to Larger
Group

• Following small group gatherings
• Report of the group of what they discussed. Focus
  on discern part of the conversation which is
  the answers to the questions.
• Closing The Steering Team summarizes what they
  heard from the reporting groups and pledges to
  use the emerging sense of the group as the plan
  for the Session Retreat.
• Close with reading the Philippians passage and a
  hymn.

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Session Retreat

• Next step
• Session retreat is where the session along with
  the steering team will spend time discerning what
  is the Missional Challenge for the congregation
  to take into Phase two. The session retreat will
  take place between Event 3 and Event 4.