I spent Tuesday and part of Wednesday in Tucson for a two-day “Congregational Vitality and Transformation Training.” And it was fabulous.
You’ll remember that for the last 12-months or so I’ve been working as a part of the Arizona Region’s Congregational Vitality and Transformation Team (the team is made up 6 local church pastors plus our Regional Minister).
For this Training Event we had Rick Morse from the National Office in Indianapolis leading us through a diverse series of experiences. We prayed together, laughed together, talked church together, and learned about some of the new discoveries and developments that are happening in helping established local churches to fully embrace God’s call for them in a changing world.
A day later it is still hard for me to describe exactly what happened at the Congregational Vitality and Transformation Training. I suppose that is the nature of Transformation…the metrics of success aren’t as simple as tallying up the number of new people in worship on Sunday; rather it is more like learning to share all of the stories of how God is at work in our lives. Nonetheless certain words and phrases have really stuck with me from the Training. Words like: Excitement, New Life, Deep Community Engagement, Possibility, Resurrection, Bridge Builders, Calling, God’s Purpose, Renewal, Growth.
One of the next steps will be engaging the congregations of the Arizona Region in the process. This will happen in conjunction with a new effort from the denomination called the Hope Partnership. We are starting the preliminary work on an event in the spring, and you can look forward to hearing more about it in the coming months!
Yours in the journey, Rev. Brian
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