Articles and Books Mentioned in this Podcast:

1. Doehring, Carrie. (2019). Searching for Wholeness Amidst Traumatic Grief: The Role of Spiritual Practices that Reveal Compassion in Embodied, Relational, and Transcendent Ways. Pastoral Psychology. 68. 
2. Healing Our Hurts: Coping with Difficult Emotions, Daniel G. Bagby, 2013
3. Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief, David Kessler, 2019

Scripture References

• When worried: Is 43:1–13; Mt 6:25–34; Php 4:4–7; 1 Pe 5:7
• When lonely: Ps 73:23–24; Is 41:10; Is 49:14–16; Jn 14:15–21
• When tired or weary: Is 40:28–31; Mt 11:28–30; 2 Co 4:16–18; Php 4:12–13
• When discouraged: Ps 34:18; Ps 42:5; La 3:20–23; Ro 8:28–39

Spiritual Practices (not mentioned)

Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us. Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, 2015

What do you think the "future church" looks like?

How can you bring your gifts and skills to the church as it changes?

What are ways the church can transform for the better?

What are essential elements of the church, and what is subject to change?

Where do we see hints of the "future church" in our little church at Grove and Meadow?

Comment below or add your thoughts to the Communal Journal.

What do you think?

How does understanding this change model understand yourself and others?

What part does discipleship play in helping the congregation work through this cycle?

Where are you prone to get stuck in this cycle?

If this cycle is a map, where are you right now?

Comment below or add your thoughts to the Communal Journal.

We all know that churches tend to move through cycles, inevitable and natural for us to do so. Our willingness to look into the mirror and share what we're seeing is important. Are we all seeing the same image of our little church when we look into the mirror? We are indebted to Dr. Tracy Hartman, one of our beloved members, for introducing us to "Life Cycles of a Congregation"

"Savy churches will constantly engage in the ongoing work of renewal..... and move with courage into the risks involved in living into. "

1. Where is Tabernale in the life cycle? Do you see us in the prime stage? Maturity Stage? or do you see us as slipping downhill? 2. What will it take for us as a congregation to (re)vision and (re)new? What are you willing to do/sacrifice to make that happen? 3. What are the barriers you/we face as we look into the mirror? What walls need to come down so that we can draw closer to God and discern together? 4. What do we pray for?

Comment below or add your thoughts to our Communal Journal.

This podcast is a supplement to our ongoing discernment dialogue as we explore what God has in store for our congregation and the universal church. We invite you to listen each week as we share thoughts, articles, questions, and ideas about our discernment process.

You can read more about church size dynamics in the article Leadership and Church Size Dynamics: How Strategy Changes with Growth by Time Keller.

A brief summary (pulled from the article) is provided here:

1. The novel coronavirus is not just something for leaders to “get through” for a few days or weeks. Instead, we need to treat COVID-19 as an economic and cultural blizzard, winter, and beginning of a “little ice age” — a once-in-a-lifetime change that is likely to affect our lives and organizations for years.
2. Due to the complex and interconnected nature of our society and economy, the majority of businesses and nonprofits are “effectively out of business” as of today, in that the underlying assumptions that sustained their organization are no longer true.
3. The priority of leaders must be to set aside confidence in their current playbook as quickly as possible, write a new one that honors their mission and the communities they serve, and make the most of their organization’s assets — their people, financial capital, and social capital, leaning on relationship and trust.
4. The creative potential for hope and vision is unparalleled right now — but paradoxically this creativity will only be fully available to us if we also make space for grief and lament.
5. We write this out of love for Christian organizational leaders and their work, with humility in a time of considerable uncertainty, and a prayerful hope that we are proven wrong by God, in his gracious providence, working miraculously through human ingenuity in this season.

After reading or listening to this article, what do you think it has to say to the current state of our church? Is it correct in its assertions?

What have you learned between March (when this article was written) and now?