+ The Good Life

VISION to ACTION Meetings lead to MISSION STUDY Objectives

The VISION to ACTION (VTA) Meetings at Palisades Presbyterian Church will help lead to the Mission Study Objectives at the church. Below are some of the objectives discussed at the VTA Meetings. Here are some of the objectives, followed by some of the characteristics suggested for members of the Mission Study Team.  Thank you to all who came out to the meetings.

OBECTIVES FOR MISSION STUDY TEAM:

A consideration of the present ministries, organization structure, communication, and programs supported by the church

An assessment of the church leadership, administration, staffing and volunteers

An audit of the facilities and grounds

An appraisal at the community demographics and needs

An evaluation of the church’s strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities

An identification of the church’s key values

An affirmation of a mission statement for the future

An outline of broad based goals to meet the church’s mission; including potential  local and international outreach, programs, staffing, facilities, and volunteer leadership

A listing of specific steps needed for the implementation of goals

A recommendation of the finances required for the future

Suggestions for the qualities in a pastor needed to help meet and guide the vision and ministry into the future.

SOME CHARACTERISTICS SOUGHT AMONG MISSION TEAM MEMBERS:

  A commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ

A long time involvement in the church

An active prayer life

A good knowledge of the Bible

A knowledge of Palisades’ history, people, structures, traditions and potential

A fresh perspective for considering creative new approaches for the future

An awareness of the community and its needs

An ability to think systematically and strategically about the future

A familiarity with meaningful and effective Christian ministries throughout the country and community that are reaching emerging generations

An ability to identify Palisades’ role in meeting a unique need in Christ’s kingdom

Both old and new perspectives that will help the church think of  the future with great love and imagination.

Appreciation to Charles La Greca for Photos

Resurrection: More than Metaphor

St Paul declares :  “…if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain…your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15: 14, 17).

I appreciate the graphic word of the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, John Updike; who embraces the power of the resurrection in his Seven Stanzas at Easter: 

 

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

 

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

 

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

 

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

 

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

 

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta*, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

 

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.