Staff Retreat (Three Initiatives)

We completed our work on the staff retreat about 10:45 this morning. It was a great time of teambuilding, dreaming, digging into the Word, and even a little fun :-). [By the way, don't even think about taking on Laura McDade in Wii boxing]

With all the support staff joining in Monday afternoon and evening, we had a learning experience around what it means to be a team. We then had a pretty intense time of reflection on a message (as in sermon) for church leaders by David Platt, Pastor of The Church at Brookhills (see links to the right).

Tuesday morning began with Ministerial and Professional Staff working through some biblical passages related to the Church. We had some open discussion about our God given mission and some biblical core values we seek to live out.

Each staff member reported on the Present State of their ministry areas.

All of the above information was incorporated into an exercise and discussion related to the future of ClearView. Finally, we laid out three key initiatives we feel will take ClearView to the next level over the next 18 months. We asked ourselves and each other what three initiatives could we take on that will get us further down the road faster as a church body over the next 12 - 18 monhts. Let me share those with you.

1. Leadership Development. We will design and implement a leadership development process that will permeate each of our staff and over 100 lay leaders over the next 18 months. In order to multiply at the rate we will need to multiply in the near future, we must have leaders who are equipped (see Ephesians 4) AND who are all moving in the same direction. This initiative was assigned to yours truly (Mark).

2. First Impressions. This initiative will be led by Michael Smith. It will cover all of our communications (Insights, worship folders, web site, etc.) and a look at all branding issues. It will also do some major overhauling of our parking lot and greeter systems for Sundays. Our signage throughout our property (outside and inside) will need some major upgrading as the new building comes online to accomodate the numbers of new people we are anticipating.

3. Evangelism. The heartbeat of God is to see people come into a right relationship with Him through Jesus Christ. We (all of us) are the instruments through which He has chosen to accomplish this mission. We are seeing growth in many areas at ClearView. It is my intention (and it always will be) to see us do a better job of reaching people with the good news of Jesus Christ. We are to impact lostness. We must raise the value of sharing our faith. John Duval will be taking the point for our staff on this initiative.

Everyone will be impacted by these three key initiatives. You may be asked to serve on a team by Michael or John Duval related to their initiatives. I am asking all of you to pray for these three areas of work.