Pastor Ron Cousineau was an interim pastor here at Bethel Grove Bible Church as we prepared for our next phase in the life of the church. One of the important things that Pastor Ron did was to enlist the entire church body to think about the future of Bethel Grove, and to come up with some objectives for our church. This process featured attendee-determined objectives through a series of meetings which were widely attended.
Brainstorming sessions allowed attendees to think big, outside the box, with every idea being OK, no matter how unique or unusual it sounded—while emphasizing that there were no bad ideas during this creative process, and the importance of not cutting down others’ ideas and suggestions. Ideas were then discussed and transformed into objectives.
Teams categorized these objectives Green (near term, end of 2022), Yellow (longer term, end of 2023) and Red (long term, end of 2024), based on the amount of work required to accomplish the objectives. Many Green and Yellow objectives have been met since that time, but not all.
The congregation all worked together with this bottom-up approach, encouraging one another to participate and invest in the future life of the church. Much work went into creating these objectives so we are reviewing them again.
More details will be provided in the Annual Report, but for now here are some examples:
Green objective (2022):
Setting the ambiance for entrance to church and family friendly environment. BG’s renovation team led a series of upgrades to our lobby last year. This one is well on its way to completion!
Yellow objective (2023):
Testimony team-identify and train people to give brief testimonies of God’s work – Testimony training held with more to be planned for future.
Green objective (2022):
Discipleship Team to identify and reproduce cutting-edge discipleship practices. Our new Discipleship Committee has been meeting regularly and publishes its annual report today.
Red objective (2024):
Teacher training that identifies and mentors potentially gifted teachers. This goal will be a top priority of Pastor Raley and the Discipleship Committee in the coming months.