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The Vision Team Update

July 1, 2007

The Good Shepherd Vision Team has begun to gather, read, study, pray and think about who we are called to be as a congregation and discern where God might be leading us. We are spending the first part of the summer reading and discussing Kelly Fryer’s, Reclaiming the ‘L’ Word: Renewing the Church From its Lutheran Core. The Church Council is also reading and studying this book at each council meeting. The team encourages anyone who would like to read this book to do so, it is available at The Christian Book and Gift store, where Good Shepherd is the church of the month in July. The team will continue to meet throughout the summer and will plan congregational events in the fall. Looking ahead, we would like to have the new Mission, Vision and set of Core Values to share by our annual meeting in January.

Why do we have a Vision Team? This group of people will lead GSC in discerning where God is at work in the world, and help determine how we can join God in that work. Their goal through prayer, individual study, group study, interviews of Rochester leaders, and in leading several congregational events is to determine how we will thrive as a congregation of disciples, proclaiming the Good News through a dynamic, shared ministry. In her book, Kelly Fryer noted that the ELCA Department for Research and Evaluation studied congregations over the course of ten years in search of what thriving, growing, vibrant churches had in common. They came to the following conclusion, “The ONLY factor that really matters is whether or not a church has a clear enough vision of where God wants it to go that it is willing to do whatever it takes to follow wherever God leads.”

God is leading us and we are preparing ourselves to follow in an intentional and purposeful way. How do we participate in the process? Pray for discernment, participate in congregational events as they happen this fall, listen to one another, to the needs of our neighbors, and to God’s voice. May we faithfully follow God’s lead.

In Christ,

The Good Shepherd Vision Team

Pastor Dave, Jeff Brown, Kelly Curtis, Alex Dearborn, Paula Freitag, Dave Herder, Jenny Jaeger, Jenny Kruse, Pam Peterson, George Price, Heather Willman