Yesterday our group met again to continue the work on culture and values. We were led through an exercise that helped us all understand the place of values in our lives and how they form us, our present and our future.
I was particularly encouraged that two more values surfaced in the course of our conversation. These two values are: choosing joy and believing in possibilities. So now we have three values that we found ourselves speaking about. The first one being leading by example. Interestingly we found several instances where we saw these values shaping our decisions. I am sure when you reflect on where we are as an intentional faith community, you will find these three to surface up. In everything we have been through we have chosen joy, we have led by example, and we have always believed that even in the face of absolute evil there is the possibility for good. With these values we see ourselves feeding people every week, we find ourselves dancing when worshipping, and we have the most creative gathering and form of engaging with the mind of God that one can imagine – with nothing set in stone. That is us! Our actions speak of who we are.
We also talked about how these values help us bring about the transformation we want to see – our vision. Finding a way to make these values our culture will help us create the space that makes transformation organic and inevitable for everyone that associates with our intentional faith community. We are already seeing it happen.
I am grateful to God for such a wonderful community where the promise of God of healing and restoration is a reality. We are continuously choosing life over death, joy over sorrow and hurt, healing over dwelling in our pain. We are doing it because we believe in the God of possibilities. We are doing this work not expecting someone else to take the lead – we are leading by example. Thanks be to God!
