Park Church is in the middle of a transition…
…so let’s move forward into God’s future, together.
In the summer of 2016, Park Church’s long time Lead Pastor Christian Andrews heard God’s call to move on to another calling. This began a time of transition in the life of this church, where we’ve decided to get better, get healthier, and re-imagine the church’s future before we move forward with a new lead pastor. To help shepherd this process, we’ve partnered with Vital Church Ministry (VCM). VCM is an organization led by pastors who have experience helping churches like ours go through transition times.
Over the winter of 2016-7, VCM conducted church-wide survey, data collection, and in-person interviews to learn about us and hear what the Spirit may be saying to Park Church at this time. In that time, VCM not only supplied us with an intentional interim pastor (Tom Wilkens), but also provided us with a series of recommendations for us as we move forward and a final report (see the executive summary here). This is the work that Park Church is undertaking in order to move forward into God’s future, together. Continue to check back here for updates.
VCM’S CORE RECOMMENDATIONS
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Embrace Grief As A Pathway To Hope and Maturity
During Park’s transition, a lot changed and some great people moved on from this community. Whenever that happens, it is painful and causes grief. Unaddressed grief always leads to more grief. The purpose of this initiative has been to help the community address its grief in a faithful manner.
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Take Biblical Community To the Next Level
Whenever a church is in transition and things are changing, conflict is bound to happen. We believe that Jesus wants us to address our conflict in a healthy, faithful way. But it’s not just conflict: Jesus wants us to be emotionally healthy and have an emotionally healthy community in all respects. The goal of this initiative is to learn to become an emotionally healthy community together.
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Develop and Implement a Church-Wide Discipleship Pathway
The mission of the church is always to make disciples – to make new disciples – but also to develop mature disciples. One observation that VCM made was that Park Church seemed to lack a clear discipleship pathway (i.e., how people mature in faith), as well as a publicly available doctrinal underpinning. The aim of this initiative is to develop this clear discipleship pathway, grounded on solid Christian doctrine.
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Update Structures and Systems
Throughout its history, Park Church has always seemed to butt up against issues surrounding clear policy, structure, and systems. VCM observed this phenomenon, and recommended that now is the time to change that pattern. So in this initiative, Park Church will reevaluate and revise important governing documents, structures, and systems.
Important Meetings
VCM Weekend Meeting, January 8, 2017
After an extensive online survey and a long weekend filled with scores of interviews, VCM presented their initial findings on January 8th after the worship service.
Renew Meeting, June 11, 2017
After working with VCM and the 4 key initiatives for months, on June 11 we officially launched under “Renew”: believing that God is renewing Park Church as we speak!
Renew Congregational Meeting, November 19, 2017
Check out the end of the year update on Renew’s progress and where God seems to be leading us moving forward.