On Sunday, November 13th, we will be holding our second Congregational Summit in the Focusing the Church process that VitalChurch Ministry is leading us through to refocus our mission and prepare for our pastoral search for PCC’s next Lead Pastor. The focus of this second Summit will be on clarifying PCC’s Mission Focus and Mission Field.
In preparation for that upcoming Summit, I thought it would be helpful to provide a recap of our first Summit on September 18th at which Dave Miles (of VitalChurch Ministry) led us in looking back at the events in PCC’s history and their significance through creating a “Journey Wall.” Here are a few photos from that Summit:
The “Journey Wall” is a time-oriented representation of the most significant events, people, and circumstances in the history of our church. The members of the PCC congregation who attended that day created this wall by working together as table groups to list and synthesize the events, people, and circumstances that significantly impacted PCC. We wrote these out individually on yellow Post-It Notes and placed them on a large paper timeline on the wall of the Teen Room. Any particular events, people, or circumstances that are “painful” (associated with painful memories of conflict, disappointment, confusion, etc.) were written out on pink Post-It Notes and placed on the wall as well. We then spent time reviewing the wall we created, seeking to identify connections, patterns, and even themes that we saw among the notes. We then discussed and noted these themes and any ‘lessons learned’, recording them on blue Post-It Notes that we put on the wall. Here a couple photos of us reviewing our work on the wall:
It helped us in creating the wall to identify several ‘chapters’ or phases in the (recent) history of PCC. Here they are with approximate dates:
- Early 2000’s – PCC experienced new clear preaching of the Gospel and began to grow in response.
- 2010-2015 – Vibrant, rapid growth that was hard to keep up with and manage.
- 2016-2020 – Trying to hold everything together… More turnover of people; Wendell burning out.
- 2020-2021 – Trials, tribulations, and conflict; things beginning to fall apart
- 2022 – Preparing to begin a new ‘chapter’
If you’d like to see the Journey Wall up close for yourself, it is still posted on the wall of the Teen Room. Here’s some photos of it:
What would you add to the Journey Wall? What do you think are the patterns, themes, and lessons of the recent ‘chapters’ in PCC’s history?
I hope you will plan on attending our second Congregational Summit on November 13th and join in the continuing discussion as we shift from looking back at the past to looking to what our present-day opportunities to reach our community (our Mission Field) for Christ and brainstorm about what our Mission Focus should be!
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