May 2013
Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
“Who are you? What are you about in this place? What is important to you?”
Though they may be largely unspoken, these are three questions people ask about the community of Grace Lutheran Church. In more theological language, they might be said in this way: “What do you live for? What are you willing to die for?”
A congregation can begin to answer these questions in a statement of its core values. Core values are important because they are a basic account of who we are and why we do what we do. As a declaration of identity, core values guide our mission and ministry as we seek to be faithful to God’s call on our lives.
In its March retreat, the church council began reworking our core values to better reflect who we are now. Ultimately, the revised values will lead to revisiting our vision and mission statements as well. For now, we will be asking you to help us fine tune the values. We will be doing this in a variety of ways, including this monthly letter.
As we developed the five core values, we realized we needed an introduction, a statement about how we are different from other organizations and churches. Our suggested “preamble” is this:
We are a community of faith…
Grace Lutheran Church is a community called by the Holy Spirit to serve God’s mission to love and bless the world. We do this from a location in the city center area of Mankato, MN, but we reach out to our region, state, and the world.
The preamble contains a “holy” statement and a “human” statement, both important aspects of our identity. The holy portion asserts that we are unique because we have been gathered by God for a purpose. God has a mission to love and bless the world, reuniting it to himself through Jesus Christ. For that mission God calls together communities of faith such as Grace.
The human part recognizes that this congregation exists in a particular ministry setting. God has placed us here to serve our neighbors. That is one reason why we have held our “Grace in the Park” worship service in Washington Park and are working to use a portion of our newly acquired property for a community garden. Even so, we realize that our neighbors can be defined more broadly to include others around the world. Another proposed core value, “Caring for God’s People,” is more specific about what this means.
More can and should be said about our holy and human identity. For now, it is enough to get us talking about who we are, what we are about here, and what is important to us. We do so because of the One who lived, died, and was raised to new life for us.
In the Name of the Risen Christ,
Pastor Olson
No comments:
Post a Comment