Engage: Our First Goal for 2016

I really enjoy The Incredibles, a movie about a family of superheroes. At one point, the dad becomes complacent. He's led an exciting, adventurous life, but now his wife needs him to engage in the real life of their family and world.
In 2011, the Study Committee, a requirement for our construction, presented a report to the Leadership Board and Staff. Near the end of the conversation, we named Salem’s three greatest strengths as welcoming others, our mission focus, and our teaching. Salem’s three most significant weaknesses were lack of space, lack of youth and youth ministries, and lack of hands-on mission work. The three changes we most wanted to see were a building project, the development of hands-on mission work, and engaging more people fully in the life of the church.
Over the last five years, I’m pleased that Salem hasn’t simply focused on building a new church facility. That’s been a huge accomplishment, of course, but we know the church is the people, not the building. So we have also focused on what is necessary for the people of Salem to accomplish our mission to make disciples of Jesus who transform the world. We have taken good steps forward with our ministry teams: the mission team, prayer team, discipleship team, outreach team, and youth team.
Still, if we’re to be fruitful in our mission, we need all the people of Salem to engage in the life of the church, to use their gifts and passion and serve, both within the church and in the world. Regarding the three changes we most wanted back in 2011, the first one, the building project, is mostly completed. Now we can focus on the next two: developing hands-on mission work and engaging more people fully in the life of the church. This is also one of the prescriptions we received from our Healthy Church Initiative consultation in 2013.
Therefore, our first goal for 2016 is to “Develop a process for participation in ministry and mission so that everyone engages in the life of the church.” 
Our first move toward this end will bring together a new ministry empowerment team to help the people of Salem discover their gifts, share their passions for ministry, and connect with others to do ministry within and beyond the walls of the church. This team will help develop the people of Salem in hands-on engagement and participation as the church, the body of Christ.
This new ministry team will certainly identify one-time and short-term opportunities for service in the church and in the world. It will also become the bridge connecting the existing ministry and mission opportunities and the people needed to carry them out.
A clarification may be helpful. While one of Salem’s strengths is our mission focus, what we discovered is that we tend to talk about mission projects and support them by giving money and material goods. The goal, though, is to move people into action. For example, Change a Child’s Story is a great mission project. We’ve already started giving books and money. The next, vital step is to engage people in a hands-on way by going and reading with a child at school.
Salem is a warm, welcoming, spiritual congregation with gifted and effective leadership and a long history of forming Christian disciples. We are resilient and tenacious in the face of significant challenges. We are far beyond merely surviving the Flood of 2008. We are an effective and fruitful congregation filled with wonderful people who follow Jesus. We are ready to take the next step and become a more powerful, fruitful influence for the kingdom of God, transforming the world as followers of Jesus.
Where would you like to serve? What do you feel called to do? Engage.

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