I’m learning that one of my weaknesses is keeping people informed of the work that is taking place at Big Stevens Creek. I’m going to try to communicate more clearly and more regularly some of the things that are happening in the background at Big Stevens Creek. Much of the work that is taking place in the background will soon be moving to the foreground and be very visible to our congregation. Let’s recap what has happened over the last seven months.
In February we presented a long term vision to our church family. We clearly defined what is most important to Big Stevens Creek, what we are about (our mission), and where we are going (our vision). You can review that information here. (Scroll to the bottom of the page for a link to the actual handout you received in February.) What we emphasized in February is that our vision is who we want to become as a church family. It’s not a program, nor is it a quick fix. Rather, we believe it’s going to take years before we fully realize all the things we desire to see God do in our midst, but step by step and one by one, we are going to tackle the various issues brought up in our time of vision-casting.
In March, we immediately got to work. We put together ministry teams, as outlined in our vision strategy, to begin working on accomplishing goals that were established by the long range planning team that developed our vision strategy. It took several weeks to get those teams put together, and in the beginning Eric and I spent time with those teams explaining in more detail some of the things discussed in our vision strategy.
These teams have been hard at work. Eric has been working with the worship ministry team, and I am sure that we will soon see some of the fruit of their labor in our times of corporate worship. I’ve been working with the local evangelism team, international missions team, and the discipleship team. You’ve already seen fruit from the international missions team. They put together a wonderful global missions conference that we had the opportunity of being a part of in August. It was phenomenal! The international missions team very soon will begin working on next year’s Russia trip.
The local evangelism team has been hard at work putting together an evangelistic plan and calendar for 2012. Our goal is to engage our community with at least one outreach event a month. In 2012, we are going to focus on servant evangelism. Simply put, we are going to serve our community in various ways to practically show our community the love of Christ. We are also looking toward some evangelistic training that will be provided before we start engaging our community in 2012. I’m very excited about some of the projects we will be attempting! We are also planning an evangelistic crusade to coincide with our 250th anniversary. It is going to be unlike any crusade you’ve ever seen, and I’m extremely excited about it. It will be unique, and hopefully the crusade will draw many from our community to our facility to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The discipleship team has been hard at work as well. We have just completed a New Members Class curriculum that we will allow the church to preview in the next month or so. Our goal is to start our first New Members Class in January. It will be a five week course that we will offer quarterly during the Sunday School hour. In the last month our discipleship team has begun addressing our current Sunday School and brainstorming about different ways to make our Sunday School more effective. We believe that Sunday School’s primary goal is to provide discipleship training to our congregation, and we are working to make Sunday School more effective in accomplishing that goal. Our goal is to involve everyone who attends Sunday morning worship in Sunday School. Hopefully over the next year or so you will begin to see different things take place in our Sunday School ministry that will help us to better make disciples of those who attend Big Stevens Creek. Don’t get me wrong, we have a great Sunday School already, and we have some of the most fantastic Bible teachers I have ever served with. However, we do want to evaluate our current Sunday School and make sure we are doing our very best for the glory of God.
You might not see all that is going on behind the scenes, but much work is being done to move Big Stevens Creek toward the mission that God has for us. Continue to pray for our church and its leaders as we strive to lead our church to know Christ and make Him known in our community and around the world.
It sounds so fantastic! I want to be a part of something, but don’t know how i would fit in!