Welcome to the new church blog! We hope to use this for reminding us all about our vision and any current seasonal focus, but also for family news, testimonies, prophecies, mission reports, teaching, follow up from preached words and more. Please feel free to submit posts to Trevor Lloyd, who will be editing the blog.
We thought we’d start with the reminder of the strategic or prophetic focus that we shared in the recent Church Family Meeting. The next three posts will be written versions of the talks given about each element of the focus in that meeting.
But first – let’s be clear what we mean by a strategic focus. It is not the same as our overall vision statement which is ‘to be a Jesus-centered community’ and developed further into a mission statement: ‘bringing the love and kindness of God to Huddersfield and the world.’
A strategic focus does not try to cover all aspects of the vision and mission of the church; rather, it is about what we feel the Spirit is spotlighting at a particular season. It is also not exclusive. It recognises that many other things continue to go on and are worthy of emphasis at different times, and may need attention at any time. Think of a garden: we may choose to attend to certain areas of the garden and certain plants at a given time, but the other plants keep growing and if it becomes apparent that another area or plant needs attention, or something springs up taking us by surprise, we respond accordingly. Nevertheless, we seek to have a strategy or plan for making progress with the garden, and it will mean different things are focused on at different times.
In this present season then, as a strategic team we felt led together by the Spirit to focus on the fact that we are a multi-generational family on a mission. Family means doing the hard work of building healthy relationships so that we love each other well. But we are not just trying to be a happy, cosy family; we are a family on a mission to see our town transformed by the love, kindness and power of God. And we want to emphasise that everyone – whatever generation they belong to – can be fully empowered, and can work together, to be a part of this mission.
And so, three main goals for this current season are:
- To encourage healthy relationships and a strong sense of family across the whole church.
- To explore creative ways of expressing the love and power of God in words and actions as we pursue the transformation of our town.
- To include and empower everyone, including all generations, as they engage in this family and this mission.
We will unpack this strategic focus a little more over the next few posts.
Trevor Lloyd