WALKING TOGETHER IN THE SPIRIT
Dear Church,
On Sunday, October 27, 2024, we had a wonderful time of meeting, eating, praying, and participating as a church in a vision exercise.
After we worshiped together, we came together to hear from your elders as to what the Lord had been laying on our hearts over the past year of praying, dreaming, and discussing. Click HERE if you have not yet read that update.
After enjoying a delicious potluck lunch, Dwayne Cline of Cline Consulting then led us in an exercise in which the congregation was asked to respond to the following questions individually, in table groups, and using a tool called Mentimeter.
Question 1: After hearing the session's presentation about being more present in the core, impacting the core, and serving the core of the city, what excites you?
Question 2: What hesitations do you have?
Question 3: What do you believe God wants to accomplish through New City over the next 3-5 years? Rank the following in order of importance to you:
Fruitful Mission
A Clear Discipleship Path
Impactful Community Engagement
Deep Spiritual Community
A Stable and Sacrificial Core
Question 4: What is blocking New City from achieving the vision God has called you to? What obstacles or contradictions need to be overcome? Rank the following in order of most significant obstacle:
Resource Constraints
Cultural Pressures
Understanding Ourselves
Missional Inhibition
Lack of Stability
Question 5: What does New City need to know in order to serve the community in the core well?
Here is how you responded to these questions. The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of times an answer was repeated among the table groups.
Question 1: After hearing the session's presentation about being more present in the core, impacting the core and serving the core of the city, what excites you?
Shared mission to the Downtown Core (8)
Create a hub where there is a healthy hum of activity (7)
Greater focus increases community and kingdom impact (increase conversion and deeper spiritual impact) (6)
Knowing and being known by people in the community – would anyone notice if we left? (6)
Engage different cultures to become more multi-ethnic (5)
Reaching out to close blocks in the proximity of the church (5)
Growing own ministries and offering them out of the building (4)
Witness a revival in the city (2)
Maximizing our space with ministries that have a shared gospel-centered purpose will be a discipleship opportunity for the church
Reaching tenants (rental) in the building
Other Responses
Being a presence downtown
Engage in cultural events and activities
Develop gospel relationships to focus on the inner city and discipleship
Church being accessible
Maximize our current church space
Intentional and focused parameters by which we plan and measure our actions
Reaching the unreached
Diversity of spiritual, cultural, and physical needs
Being able to serve with people you know in the community
Understanding and serving our diverse neighbourhoods with our diverse church gifts
Question 2: What hesitations do you have?
How can those living further out contribute to the mission meaningfully? (8)
We’re tired – empty cups (6)
Overcommitting and burnout (4)
Age and demographic of our church (4)
Extra personnel and finances needed (4)
Serving a community that does not feel safe and feeling ill-equipped (4)
Losing focus on the gospel (3)
How do we drop fruitful ministries to make space? (3)
Is the building currently accessible and functional? (3)
Working together in support roles given distance and proximity
Personal idols and lack of faith and commitment leaving us ill-equipped
Other responses
20% of people doing 80% of the work. The core 20% are feeling burnout
Lack of self-awareness
Understanding ourselves and our neighbourhood before acting
Analysis paralysis due to overwhelming need and perfectionism
Losing members
Doing more harm than good by failing to deliver on our promises
Opposition being in the public eye
Lack of visibility of our church
Invested and planted in other spheres and groups
Are we spreading ourselves too thin with all the programs?
Hostility to the gospel
Losing momentum
Not knowing where to start
*For the following Mentimeter polls, in order to include the hand-written answers that were submitted, the results had to be converted from number of people to a “points tally.”
Question 3: What do you believe God wants to accomplish through New City over the next 3-5 years? We believe God wants us to be/have ...
Question 4: What is blocking New City from achieving the vision God has called you to? What obstacles or contradictions need to be overcome?
Question 5: What does New City need to know in order to serve the community in the core well?
Who do we reach out to? Which group? Which demographic? How do we love people well? (5)
What is the core? Geographically? What street boundaries? (5)
How has history influenced the neighbourhood? Are there stereotypes? How has the neighbourhood developed due to its history? (4)
What other churches serving the core can New City partner with? (4)
What other ministry and Christian ministry partners are serving the core? (4)
Researching what has worked in other communities? (3)
We need to grow in our discipleship of theology of place and home (2)
Understanding cross-cultural ministry (e.g., Mandarin-speaking students living around New City)
How do we understand ourselves better – understand the unspoken cultural assumptions of New City and the unspoken cultural assumptions of other ethnicities at New City?
Other Responses
What are the biggest needs?
What does God want us to do?
Capacity assessment of congregation
How can we connect with our neighbour?
Discipleship around embracing discomfort – the rich and poor need each other
How can we evangelize effectively?
How can we develop gospel-informed friendships and grow in social skills?
Thank you, church, for your robust, open, and helpful participation. If you have any further questions or input, please be sure to contact the elder overseeing your shepherding huddle. As we consider your responses in prayer, we ask that you join us in continued and concerted prayer.
Here is a guide to help us pray together.
Thank God for His wonderful faithfulness in leading us over the last sixteen years of our existence as a local church.
Thank God for the ways that the Spirit has guided our church in unity and love thus far throughout the vision renewal process.
Confess any desire to try and shape our church in our own image, rather than a church shaped in the likeness of Christ and his mission for the church.
Pray that the Lord will reawaken our souls and set our hearts afire with the gospel of grace, so that whatever comes of this visioning process, we will not drift from the gospel.
Pray for the elders and staff, that the Lord will renew their strength, enlighten their minds, unite their hearts, and fill them with a shepherd’s eager love for Christ’s flock as they seek the Lord’s face in wisdom and discernment.
Pray that the Lord will give us a beautiful, compelling, Christ-honoring vision for his church that will unite us, energize us, and guide us in the years ahead.
Pray that the Lord will protect our church from the fiery arrows of the devil, and that we will keep close watch on our hearts, as Satan tries to sow seeds of disunity, dissension, and discontentment among us.
Pray that the Lord will give us strong faith and confidence that He is with us, He goes before us, and that He will faithfully provide for whatever He is calling us to do.
Finally, on Wednesday, November 27, at 6:30 PM, during our regularly scheduled Prayer & Praise evening, we invite you to join us for a Prayer Walk around our church’s neighbourhood. As we walk through the streets where God has placed us, we will ask the Lord to direct our steps according to His will.
The Lord has been so good to us. And we are grateful and excited to see what He will do in the years to come. Please keep praying with us as we journey together in step with the Spirit!
Moses, on behalf of your elders