March Reading

There where a couple of sentences that really stood out to me in this chapter.
"Evangelism is not a responsiblity, but also a privilege."
"Student ministers won't graduate from their faith when they graduate from the youth ministry."
As much as these two sentences really struck me they also made me pause and wonder if I believed these concepts and also if I see this taking place amongst our youth group. I believe that we are just at the very beginning steps to these two concepts. With Impact Yankton I believe it will be a bit easier to get more into the area of evangelism for our youth. Through discipleship we will begin to help grow our student ministers.

I thought the questions where good also, it really got me thinking. I don't think that I differ much on the words to define our 5 purposes but I did have a few different ones.

• Worship- is simple and to the point and this is a term that we emphasis well with the teens so I think they are understanding this concept more.
• Ministry- "overflow" I believe is just such an awesome visual concept that it helps to relate it to ministry-mindedness.
• Evangelism- reach
• Fellowship- unify
• Discipleship- grow

Here are the grades I would give:

Evangelism: D- (I think we can improve on this with Impact Yankton)

Fellowship: C (I think we all could be stretched in this area more)

Discipleship: B- (Mentorship and Grey Area)

Ministry: C- (I agree with Annette, it's something we are learning more about)

Worship: B (I see the teens getting better at this)

I believe that there have already been inprovements in each of these areas and as we as a team become more unified we will see more of a balance across the board.

Annette's March Blog

Wow this was a great chapter too. We've talked about writing our Mission Statement - and this is why we haven't done it yet. Chapters 2 and 3 are about how to do that. So here are some thoughts.

We've heard a lot about the five-fold purposes. It is scripture, and to me, there's no reason to deviate from that when trying to formulate a statement about your purpose! It's the ultimate wisdom! But we can find a way to express it so that it's in our words.

There were a couple of the discussion questions that I thought were awesome and I would love to hear your thoughts too... I liked the exercise about putting the 5 purposes in your own words. This is only my first shot at it - I think if we took more time, we could think of other words.

• Worship - I like "Worship" :o) It's to the point.
• Ministry - "Overflow" (I think this principle makes so much sense now and will in the future as well)
• Evangelism - "Reach"
• Fellowship - "Belong"
• Discipleship - "Grow" (I love the growing out loud reference)

I think the area that we spend most of our time is on discipleship. Here are the grades I gave us - see if you agree.

• Worship - B (overall, I think it's pretty good, but we need more boldness and consistency in our worship life as a group...it's coming, especially after Boot Camp)
• Ministry - C- (I would have graded this a D but I think it's improving because of Overflow)
• Evangelism - D- (I could almost put an F, but we do talk about it at least; we just don't DO much of anything yet)
• Fellowship - C (this may surprise you...we're good at fun events but I don't think we're doing a very good job of helping our new people acclimate to being a part of us)
• Discipleship - B+ (we provide opportunities for growth, mentorship is a big part of this one, we definitely cover this in Wednesday services, always room for improvement)

The question that was the most difficult to me is "What will it take to do all five?" If I knew that, I wouldn't need to read this book! LOL So I really look forward to ideas and suggestions of how to strengthen these areas. I think we're on the right track with fellowship/visitors, and I think that God is really working on some evangelism opportunities for us...it's coming. But I do worry about keeping a healthy balance. And I do feel we definitely need some more sponsors to truly do a good job of balance.