In the hands of the potter email updates
The Vision
Dear RCC Congregation,
I do pray that you are being encouraged and built up in your life in Christ and that you have friends around you who can help you and encourage you as well.
We exist, all churches, exist, to be a physical expression of the life of the family of God, carrying out His mission to the world and living out the life of love and service that he modeled, commanded and prayed that we would be able to experience.
The work we will be doing in our Re-visioning process is intended to help us grow in the likeness of Christ and do better at helping everyone experience what Jesus sought for us. Please pray together that we will both receive and act on God’s wisdom as we go through this Re-visioning process. There were four specific practices we described in the sermon on February 3rd introducing the Re-visioning process. They were: Prayer, Surrender, Forgiveness and Unity. These are all practical expressions of a willingness to be shaped by the Lord into His plan for Redwood Covenant.
Prayer is always the core practice. In prayer we find ourselves made pliable and it is where we express to the Lord how seriously we are taking anything, being shaped as a church in this case. We are praying together on the first Sunday evening of each month but that is not nearly enough. We are hoping and praying that each of us is also praying in a small group, as well as privately, about allowing God to be the shaper in our personal lives as well as our corporate life together.
Surrender is an absolute essential for a disciple of Jesus. In fact you can’t be a disciple of Jesus without surrender. We suggested that a practical expression of surrender for American’s in general would be a renewed stewardship pledge by committing to give 1% more than we have in the past. That was our suggestion based on the process of surrender that most people go through, as Martin Luther expresses it, there is a conversion of the heart, the mind and the pocket book, in that order. But we know that for some, another part of their life may be the best expression of an attitude of surrender, either giving something up or doing something for Christ you have been avoiding or even running from. The important thing is to seriously grapple with your own surrender to Jesus.
Forgiveness. Jesus offers forgiveness to anyone who surrenders his or her life to Him. He then commands us to become forgivers as well. This is one of the hardest things to do when we have been truly hurt by someone, especially someone close to us. It is also the most freeing of all behaviors. To forgive sets you free and the other free. We pray that all of us will forgive one another whatever grievances we may have against another.
Unity. Finally, life in the Lord is expressed in unity. Not in uniformity but in unity. We want to fulfill our Lord’s Prayer that we live in the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. This can only happen if we truly love one another. We need to make this our goal, to express love in some way for the sisters and brothers we bump into no matter where we meet them.
All of this is an expression of submission to Christ in reality. Coming up in April we will be dealing with this theme in detail as we continue our study in Ephesians. Jesus counsels us to submit ourselves not only to Him but to one another as well. We are going to learn how mutual submission truly builds up one another when we practice it according to God’s counsel. It is the key to a healthy marriage, family, and life together, but only when it fulfills the beginning of the entire section found in Eph. 5:21 “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”
– Pastor John Strong
The Beginning...February 2008
Revisioning has become a term well known in many areas of study today although it hasn’t made it to the dictionary yet! It means to look again, at who you are, what you are doing and why you are doing it and to change it as necessary. In a sense, those who come to Christ are called to do that from the moment they surrender to Jesus. They become a new creation, have a new spirit, a new relationship with God and others. We must all learn to see our selves differently, to visualize our lives differently, to live differently.
RCC engaged in an extensive time of study, discussion, meetings and prayer during 1992 and 1993 as we decided what our mission would be. We also decided that year what our worship, ministries and “style” (eg. informal) needed to be to accomplish that mission.
The vision has served us well until now. Yet over the years, as we’ve grown, certain things don’t work as well as they could. In 2008 we want to pause and do what we did back in 1992: pray, study, discuss, and seek God for His vision for RCC’s next years of ministry.
We want to look again at our mission and our vision for who we are, who we want to be, and how we are going to go about fulfilling what we understand God to be calling us to be and do.
Coming soon, we are going to ask everyone to fill out a survey that will have a number of questions on it about our church and our lives as Christians.
We will have the opportunity to be part of a dozen or so focus groups. Some of these groups will be formed with people in specific life stages. Others will be people who are new here, and who have left here, and who have been here a long time. People in leadership, people who volunteer and who don’t volunteer. But this won’t be all.
We can’t approach revisioning the way a business would. As a church, we can use some of the same tools, but ultimately we submit to our Lord and must discern (rather than simply decide) who, what and how.
I invite you now to begin this venture of revisioning with an attitude of submission to Him. We joyfully acknowledge to Him and to ourselves, that we are the clay and He is the potter. Just as the clay submits to the potter’s hands, we become supple and moldable in His hands. And we are changed forever.
We are going to make corporate prayer a priority by holding holding monthly congregational prayer meetings.
We are going to submit to God in our stewardship and make living life on God’s terms our focus. We are going to submit our hearts by engaging in church wide forgiveness, setting aside every offense and forgiving even our enemies. And we are going to maintain our unity with every effort, from communicating better to bearing with each other’s weaknesses.
God has wonderful possibilities before us, for transforming lives. We want to partner with what He is doing. Lets seek him together for our future.
– Pastor John Strong
Web feedback or questions: rcc@redwoodcovenant.org
Redwood Covenant Church | 3175 Sebastopol Rd. Santa Rosa, CA 95407 | Ph: 707/528-8463