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Church of the Crossroads NEW CREATION INITIATIVE INTRODUCTION The New Creation Initiative has been an important and
dynamic process of discovery and discernment within our church. Some four years ago we began by developing a
Congregational Profile centered around four areas:
Religious Heritage, Context, Constituency, and Organizational History. From this, we identified eight strategic
issues: 1. Religious pluralism. What
does it mean to profess the Christian faith in a religiously pluralistic world? 2. Long
term sustainability of our church community.
Given the fact that more
people identify with Crossroads for shorter periods of time and the fact
that a good portion of our congregation is aging, how can we sustain ourselves
for the long-term? The
intergenerational, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural community. How can we sustain Church of
the Crossroads as an intergenerational, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural community? 4. Meaningful Christian worship.
What constitutes meaningful Christian worship? 5. Teaching and learning.
Teaching and learning are essential to the health and identity of our
church. How can they be strengthened in
our church? 6. Stewardship of gifts and time. How do we make certain that everyone has an
opportunity to exercise the gifts they bring for ministry? 7. Our neighborhood and larger community. What kind of witness can we have within the
context of our immediate neighborhood and the larger community surrounding us? 8. Global issues. How do we
become intentionally involved in peace with justice issues facing the world? After we identified these strategic issues, we set
them on the back burner and began to engage ourselves in a process of
discernment. Through sermons, bible
study and adult education, we spent time exploring a number of
biblical/theological foundations. This
process of discernment has led to the creation of a vision for Church of the
Crossroads. With this vision guiding us,
design teams and a core group from these design teams further refined the
vision through a series of missional covenants, which established in broad
terms the anticipated and more specific desired results in our communal life
together. We also established guiding
principles that we committed to remain at the forefront of our contemplation,
discernment, and planning. Finally, we
set forth a number of specific activities that both flowed from and would
support the vision of missional focus in our New Creation Initiative process. With the resultant document, we are ready to
establish an administrative and functional structure best suited to this new
environment and then launch the New Creative Initiative within the Church of
the Crossroads. A Church of the
Crossroads, a community of faith rooted in the life, faith, and ministry of
Jesus the Christ and centered in personal and social transformation, is
committed to embody the three-fold missional activity of God: 1) the mission of
nurture; 2) the mission of service; and 3) the mission of peace with justice,
and the stewardship of the earth. 1. The Church of the Crossroads, in its worship and
spiritual life, in its pastoral care and its spiritual nurture of one another,
and in its ministry of education seeks to stimulate and enable personal
transformation so that we may become the just, loving and whole people God
created us to be. We understand such
transformation to be a sign, a foretaste and an instrument of that which God
intends for all people. In this mission,
the images of People of God, Body of Christ, and Communion of the Holy Spirit
will guide us. 2. The Church of the Crossroads will seek to serve the needs
of others within and beyond the community of the church, whether it be the homeless, the hungry, those suffering from the
consequences of violence, discrimination, or economic injustice. Additionally, acknowledging the holiness of
the earth, we will seek to serve the health and restoration of the aina itself. Through our service, by the grace of God, we
will seek to enable the transformation God intends for all people and the life
of mother earth herself. In our service,
we will be guided by a nurturing spirit, the practice of hospitality and the
goal of friendship. We will find
ourselves being served as we in turn serve others and the needs of the
earth. As we serve one another, in
solidarity with those we meet through our serving, we will be led to examine
and to work with others to change the social structures and policies that create human misery in the first
place. Inspired by the practices of
ancient Hawaiian people and the early Christian community, we will be guided by
the vision of a world in which sharing by all will mean scarcity for none. Our service may well lead us to a public
witness on behalf of peace, justice, and the stewardship of creation. 3.
The In its own life, as
it gathers people together and as it carries out its public witness in the
world, guided by its Just Peace and Open and Affirming Covenants, Church of the
Crossroads will be focused on transformation.
We will affirm the need to break down and transform the social
structures of oppression as well as affirm the inner, personal transformation
that must take place in the lives of individual human beings. In this mission of peace with justice, we
affirm the need to break down and transform all those barriers that plague us
as human beings and which fail to support the common good of all people:
barriers of class, gender, ability, sexual orientation, race, age, religion,
and other social and political inequities.
In our stewardship of the earth itself, we will seek to transform and
heal that which has been all in the earth that has been abused and misused in
the name of profit and progress. A guiding text for this vision is Micah 6:8 God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does God require of you but to do justice,
and to love kindness, and to walk
humbly with your God. The three human activities God requires of us are
related to the three-fold missional activity of God as we define it in the
Crossroads vision. (worship and spiritual life, pastoral care and nurture,
education) (the love of kindness
expressed in hospitality and friendship and the care of the earth, leading to
public witness and advocacy) (the breaking down and
transformation of the barriers that divide the human community and the practices that threaten the
life of the earth) Again, we see these three human activities required
by God as inter-related and leading into one another. It is not assumed that we will divide our time and energy equally among
all three. At the same time, we affirm that none of these are separate
from one another. Transformation is the linking paradigm. For example, we understand that the mission
of nurture is linked to the mission of service and the mission of peace with
justice and the stewardship of the earth.
In the mission of nurture we will seek to break down the barriers that
divide us with the same passion as in the mission of service and the mission of
transformation. We will not engage in
one mission to the exclusion of the others.
In carrying out one mission, we will have the other two in mind. As we seek to be the sign, the foretaste,
and the instrument of God's reign we will be mindful of all three dimensions of
God's missional activity. Missional Covenants
Based
on our mission and vision, the following are statements of commitment and
promise that establish the ends toward which the journey of the New Creation
Initiative within Church of the Crossroads will take us in each of the three
missional areas. The Our
worship will include lay leadership and creative arts, and will reflect our
public witness regarding peace, justice and stewardship of the earth. Worship
will incorporate a wide range of expressions, retaining traditional elements
that nurture our faith, while also allowing for innovation, creativity,
integration of the arts and sharing of faith journeys. Through
mentoring new members will be intentionally and effectively integrated into the
life and work of the church. Faith
formation will include a wide range of activities for all age groups as well as
intergenerational activities. These
activities will provide a base for increasing our knowledge and awareness of
how we are God's people and how we participate in God's mission. Opportunities
for sharing of faith journeys and relationship building will be an integral
part of our common life. Pastoral
care and spiritual nurture are the shared responsibility of clergy and laity. The We
will actively serve and support all within our community of faith. Guided by the spirit of kindness, we will
practice hospitality and nurture friendships. Our
stewardship will include pledges of time, talents, and financial commitment to
assure our support for the day-to-day life and work of our church. We
will become instruments of God's peace through acts of service. Ongoing opportunities for service to others
in our wider community will be integrated into our common life and will both
deepen our faith and expand the boundaries of our hospitality. The We
will continue to affirm and live out our just peace and open and affirming
covenants. We
will be a community that practices reconciliation. We will actively seek to identify,
understand, and remove the barriers to personal and interpersonal peace within
our community. We
will make a consistent public witness calling for social structures and
policies that create justice, eliminate human misery, and promote an equitable
distribution of the earth's resources. We
will call for an end to the abuse and misuse of our planet and will work for
the healing ands restoration of the earth. Guiding Principles
In our common life together and as a
community of faith we will: 1. Integrate missional areas and our NCI vision
into all aspects of church life. 2. Nurture relationships, connectedness, and the
sense of community. 3. Allow the Spirit to move: creativity and
spontaneity. 4. Continually reflect on the connections
between our faith and our actions. 5. Encourage more open expression of our faith
journeys, questions, and beliefs. 6. Honestly appraise our resources (human and
financial), energies and capabilities. 7. Cultivate the nurture and sharing of our
gifts. |