It has been nearly four months since I began as your pastor.  During that time, we have enjoyed wonderful growth and have set record attendance in most areas.  In addition, we have seen a number of people make key personal, spiritual decisions such as making a first time profession of faith, rededication to Christ, join the church, etc.  It is a lot of fun to watch what God is doing and see the prayers of so many begin to be answered in our fellowship.

In the process of interviewing to be your pastor, I sensed that the founding vision of Celebration had been, to large degree, fulfilled.  Therefore, one of the first activities would be to get before God to discern what was next; that notion has been validated by a number of people over these months.  Knowing who we are, where we are going and how we plan to get there is critical to our effectiveness in fulfilling the Great Commission of Jesus Christ that we “make disciples.”

Conventional wisdom is that it takes a new pastor an estimated three years to learn a new church family with her history, surrounding community, values, personality, etc. well enough to provide a new direction.  However, at the time I was starting at Celebration I was exposed to a group of former pastors and church leaders who comprise a company named “Auxano” (www.visiontogrow.com).  Their purpose is to guide churches and ministries to discern God’s unique call for them in this time and their specific place. 

After prayer and much consideration, the Leadership Team of Celebration decided to engage their services.  They are able to facilitate in seven months what would have taken me, as pastor, as long as three years to navigate.  I have assembled a group of people that includes our ministry staff and a number of lay people to act as a Vision Team.  I sought to assemble a group that accurately represented the make–up of our church family. These people have committed to serve a full day once per month for the next seven months.  We have already had two sessions and are preparing for our third.

At the end of this process, we hope and pray we will have a clear sense of what makes us unique and how God wants us to tackle our mission of making disciples from the corner of Kernan and McCormick in Arlington.  This will be presented to the church in the fall of this year.

There is a lot at stake … this is a prayerful process and a deliberate one as well.  I ask you to be praying for our team (their names follow) and for our Auxano facilitator, John Shepherd.  Right now, we are reading through the book of Acts and asking God to make clear the things that are most important to Him.  In addition, we are working to articulate our special approach to making disciples in a way that captures the essence of our mission, the opportunities that surround us and the resources we have to address those opportunities.

Here is our Vision Team:

            Becky Campbell           David Penrod               Jimmy Walker

            Moises Camacho          Jo Goethe                     Judy Crosby

            Chuck Ward                Rachel White                Josh Robinson

            Scott Magdalein           Kathy Walker               David Gaffney

            Paul White

I cannot overemphasize how important this process is to the life and future of our church.  While we are enjoying a lot of guests and new decisions for Christ we must think ahead and focus our efforts.  Please pray with me and for these people as they work diligently on our behalf.

Blessings,

Pastor Paul