I wanted to share how good God has been this past year, especially with calling me here to serve next to pastor Dell. Here is what has been accomplished so far, our first retreat for the Retool vision team met on October 28-29, 2022. Here the vision team of almost 30 people are learning and discerning the voice and will of God together to help create the strategic vision that will take LGCC into the future. After our first retreat, our vision team broke into 3-man teams called triads to work on our church health using the book Emotionally Healthy Church, By Peter Scazzero. This book will be used as a primer for how our Life Groups will act and teach others to follow Christ. From this we will create an internal communication covenant called house rules, that establish how the church fulfills one another’s commands. After retreat one, the vision broke into 9 teams of three called triads to learn to become emotionally healthy as a church. The vision team's goal is to impact the rest of the church with emotional health, the house rules, and the mission, vision, and values that we are developing to take us into the future. We are having great success, as we have nine triads meeting weekly and preparing mentally and emotionally to be an example to the church.
On November 19th, 2022, we started rebuilding our new discipleship system, the first of ten systems we must build for our church to be healthy. Our training was a great success as all the new life group leaders are excited to be a part of our new discipleship system and use their gifts to help the church grow and begin to Live Life in Relationship. We will be building a three-track system, the Learning Track is for new or growing believers who need to learn what we believe as Christians and why we believe it. We are also so excited as we have our new curriculum specific to LGCC, the Discovery Series. So now our values and our discipleship process, or guiding vision for new believers, are saying and doing the same thing. The Living Track: this is for maturing believers who want to learn and go beyond the basics, here they will learn, theology, the bible, parenting, men’s studies, and women’s studies all from a biblical worldview, some New Life Groups will be specific to an issue such as parenting, drugs, or issue that we have discovered are needed to make an impact in our community! Our third track is our Leadership Track: Here, men and women, who are called to lead, no matter how big or small their ministry, will be trained and equipped in one of our ten ministries, or if needed, build something completely new.
On January 1, 2023, I started officially as the new associate pastor of Community Life, we kicked off our spring semester of our discipleship system on January 9th, 2023, with nine new Life Groups, having 76 people, begin learning to live life in relationship. As I continue to serve, we are building the other 9 systems, but we will begin with worship, assimilation, discipleship, communications, and Children’s. Then move to the other systems as soon as possible.
We walked further through the Vision process (Retool) in 2023, having retreat #2 on February 10-11, retreat #3 on June 23-24, and retreat # 4 November 10-11, 2023. By the end of retreat #4 we had a working vision statement that everyone was excited about and could see LGCC living that out moving forward. From there, we broke into three smaller teams, one to continue to work on the vision statement, the second to look at leadership development and the third team to assess community impact. Each team was tasked with writing a strategic plan for each part of our vision that will take us three years into the future for 2024, 2025, and 2026. We plan to meet one more time in the first part of 2024 to finalize everything and then will plan a Vision Service where everything will be rolled out to the entire congregation.
Here are a few of the major goals I’ve been tasked to accomplish in 2024.
Goals for 2024 - The year of positioning our church to cross our Jordon River to capture new land, as everyone goes ALL IN!
1. Pastor Dell hires Next Gen Pastor.
2. Introduce a new mission statement.
3. Introduce our new values, Love, Live, Give, Go.
4. Introduce our House Rules.
5. Introduce the strategic vision plan to the church.
6. Have a preaching theme for 2024-2026. In 2024 “Positioning the Church /ALL IN!”
7. Have all Ten major ministries up and running, ready to lead with pastor dell.
8. Help develop the preaching themes for the year(s), 2025 and 2026 and preach when needed.
9. Help Shepard and lead the church as Pastor Dell's Associate.