Dear Council, this represents my first and second attempts to rearticulate Emmaus Road's IDENTITY and PURPOSE. I brought key texts and phrases to our Elders meeting on Sunday, May 4. Suellen, Andrew, David and I talked through these verses and phrases; I explained how they speak to me, why I believe they speak to our body.
More recently, I reformulated the expression of our name, motto, etc. Read below; let's share thoughts online; what do you think?
MY PLANS:
1. Print, post, display, and "softly" present this material during the May 31st retreat, with room for folks to write comments
2. Keep the printed comment boards up on Sunday mornings over the summer.
3. Over the next several weeks or months, "divide and conquer" as Council members out in mini-forums and small gatherings of couples and individuals throughout our Elder Districts, to get feedback and generate discussion.
4. Build consensus by the fall; somehow celebrate our renewed Call as a church body; special Road Crew event, August 28; or use some Sunday morning worship event as the occasion
NAME: Emmaus Road
As the Lord walks alongside us, he reveals and we discover
As the Lord walks alongside us, we walk alongside another
MOTTO: Church: Sunday and Beyond
We experience God in Gathering, Word, Sacrament, Song
We experience God in Going, Walking Alongside, Talking
We experience the fullness of God, in both Gathering and Going
CALLING/MISSION/PURPOSE/IDENTITY/VISION:
EMMAUS ROAD EXISTS TO…
Grow as a body of walking, talking, disciples of Jesus
EMMAUS ROAD EXISTS TO…
Bring the Kingdom around the Sound, wherever I live, work, and play, empowered with gifts of the Spirit. As an individual, I walk alongside my neighbor, leaving God’s fingerprint in relationship. I set aside the secular, pagan, or pharisaic self, to accept myself in Christ’s body
EMMAUS ROAD EXISTS TO…
Reconcile Tower and Street cultures, to plant seeds and create new life with our neighborhood. As a church body, we walk alongside these neighbors, leaving God’s footprint in community development, through mutual hospitality, partnership, service, art, and industry. We set aside traditions rooted in fear, idolatry, legalism, or worldly ambition, to accept the identity of Christ’s body serving the world, Word made flesh within our neighborhood.
Texts which stand out to challenge, guide, and shape us
Deuteronomy 1:28, 21
Israel: “The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky.”
Moses: “Go up and take possession of it as the LORD, the God of your fathers, told you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged."
Deuteronomy 11:18-21a
18 Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 19 Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 20 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land…
Jeremiah 29:4-7
This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper."
Zechariah 4:6,10
"This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: 'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the LORD Almighty.”
"Who despises the day of small things?”
Luke 14:13-14
“But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."
Luke 24
“He walked alongside…”
“they urged him strongly, ‘Stay with us…’”
John 4:31-34
Meanwhile his disciples urged him, "Rabbi, eat something."
But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about."
Then his disciples said to each other, "Could someone have brought him food?"
"My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.”
Colossians 3:11
“Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”
Hebrews 10:23-25
“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”
Phrases of mission, purpose
• Walk alongside
• Host; Hospitality; works both ways, as in Emmaus Road story of disciples, who “urged him strongly, ‘Stay with us…’”; Walking alongside leads to mutual hospitality: Jesus in Matthew’s house, Zacheus’ house; Peter in Cornelius’ house; Joe Corsi giving me a parking place; Green Space;
• Generations; ministry with children is futuristic; kids serving with us, kids in Green Space
• People of the Story, People of the Walk
• Keeping Story and Walk real, for every member of body
• Challenging contemporary scripts around us, re: urban growth, belonging, ignored people, progress, etc. (instead of consumers, creators; instead of ‘birds of a feather,’ ‘birds of many feathers,’ etc.)
• Storytellers; telling God’s story of city as opposed to world’s story; God’s story does not ignore the lepers, etc.
• Leaving a good footprint in the neighborhood, in the “microhood”, community/neighbor development
• Reconciliation; Bridging Tower and Street culture; One Safe Table
• Place among post worship, post cold-call culture (Green Space, instead of getting Blue into Yellow)
• Missional Measurements: acknowledging growth in terms of time, relationships w/people “along the way,” versus measurement of people in the Temple; measurements of “Green Space” where church crowd and world crowd meaningfully overlap
Methodology, Mechanics
• Transparency
• Leadership within Horizontal governance, leading by facilitating consensus
• Ministry in Concert, Partnership; Belltown Covenant; ABCD (Asset Based Community Development; grass roots)
• Leadership modes: Strengthen and Stretch – symbiotic necessity of building inward fellowship while engaging outward community in mission together
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