Getting to Know Ebenezer

Dear People of God at Ebenezer,

By the time this blog is published we will have completed nine of our ten cottage meetings designed to draw all of us into conversations about dreams, visions and goals for this community of faith. I’m thankful to all of you who attended one of these meetings. My goals were to meet you, learn more names, start to figure out where people live, and spend time talking about our future. We succeeded, I think, with all of these goals, but especially with conversations about the future.

The details were different at each meeting. At least one completely unique idea happened at each gathering. But there were some common things that were said in some way at nearly every meeting:

• We are excited about our future
• We are passionate about worship, and the arts, and outreach
• We want to use our space/facilities faithfully
• We are a “downtown” church with unique blessings, opportunities and challenges
• Cooperation and collaboration are life–giving
• Communication is crucial

Some of your insights affirm things we are already working on. Others draw our leadership’s attention to new possibilities and directions. These conversations are only a starting point. We share a vision of a congregation where everyone can identify our mission priorities, and everyone feels valued and worthwhile in our shared pursuit of a common goal.

We have a God of abundance and not a God of scarcity. Our congregation has been abundantly blessed with resources – people, facilities, ideas, money – to do faithful things in this community and to make Christ’s love visible to a weary world.

Faithfully yours,

Pastor Paul