WAKE UP PROCESS
Awareness, adaptation, and alignment
THE WAKE UP PROCESS
Waking up the church is essential for our future. We all want to see our faith community thrive with a long lifespan. Organizations go through times of thriving and times of rest. Waking Up your congregation is more than just saying, “This is normal.”
The decline is rapid right now. The changes in our world always outpace the change in a faith community, but the gap is growing wider and wider. Seasons of growth have turned into seasons of decline. We have windows of opportunity where we can enter in to shift the future. We see these when:
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- There is a crisis in the church.
- There is a change of professional leadership in the church.
- There is an intentional effort to thrive by engaging in new practices, new skills, and new support for a high-commitment change effort.
You can already guess that #3 is the most strategic and most effective. It can bring a future vision and a heart for leading change. This Journey is a change process. Waking up means it is time to ask some hard questions of ourselves, to figure out why we exist.
The listening process is the best place to start as we Wake Up to God in our lives.
The Wake Up Process involves waking up to the neighborhood and three types of Core Values:
- Listening to God in the neighborhood. This listening is held in tension with listening to scripture, prayer, and the congregation.
- Core Beliefs. The deepest values of a congregation, they are the essence of your “God-view.”
- Core Convictions. The values that are specific to each congregation, representing your unique call in a particular place and time.
- Core Practices. The values that need to evolve and change over the years, yet these are likely to create conflict when changed.
The Wake Up Process includes four steps. Each step aligns with a Learning Event on the LEAD Journey.
ENGAGE with the neighborhood
- Introduction to the Wake Up Process
- Engage in the neighborhood
- Create great questions
- Strategic listening with the neighbors
FAITH to live out of Core Values
- Introduction to Core Values
- Clarify Core Beliefs
- Listen with your heart and soul
- Focus on Core Convictions
- Listen with your mind and strength
GRACE creates space for rethinking Purpose
- The Disciple’s Way
- Framing changes everything
- Honor the ancestors
- Reinvention
- Focus on a purpose statement.
HOPE against hope with Core Practices and Alignment
- Grounded in hope
- Core Practices
- Alignment
- Simplify Ministry
- Focus on Life
It’s a step at a time as we listen on the Journey. Each step includes:
- Intentional action and reflection
- New learning & networking
- Practices for the team, elected leaders, and congregation