Visioning Process

July 27th, 2021

Alive In Christ began a visioning process earlier this summer to clarify the purpose of our church. The goal of the visioning activities is to seek God's vision for Alive In Christ. What is our purpose? Why does Alive In Christ exist? What is our identity? We are asking "Who are we, Lord?" and "Why do You have us here, Lord?" We have contracted with LCEF (Lutheran Church Extension Fund) to facilitate our visioning process.

The Vision Team

The first step in this process was to establish a Vision Team. Our LCEF facilitator, Reverend Mark Frith, challenged us to put together a team of no more than 12 people. This team is to meet four times over the course of the process: first to choose the questions for the congregation vision survey (June 15th); second, gather with the rest of the congregation for a vision meeting (July 19th); 3rd to pour over and distill down comments and information from the vision meeting (August 10th); and finally to write the vision statement (August 23rd). The following people are serving on the Vision Team: Tim Morris, Scott Schilb, Debbie Thompson, Amanda Dablemont, Tom Hoien, Janet Morris, Will Kiehl, Stacia Eversole, Ellisa Morris, Gary Riedel, Brandon Russell and Tammy Wiese.

The Survey

We launched the visioning survey on June 27th and kept it open through July 12th. Our LCEF facilitator advised that if we received 40 completed surveys we would have enough information to work with. The Visioning Team was hopeful that we would get 100 people to participate. Our goal was to hear from as many of the Alive In Christ family as possible. We were blown away with 196 responses!!! All surveys were anonymous with only Mark Frith with LCEF receiving the responses. It was then his job to distill the surveys down into meaningful themes to be shared at the July 19th visioning meeting.

Prayer

The visioning process is meant to seek the LORD's guidance in clarifying our identity and purpose as a congregation. We can not do that without being in conversation with God through prayer. A team has been established specifically for praying for this visioning process and for Alive In Christ. In addition to this team, we would like for every person who calls Alive In Christ home to also be in prayer with the team. The following are opportunities to join us corporately in prayer:

July 19th @ 5:30pm - time of prayer in the sanctuary and via zoom prior to the 6pm visioning meeting. This event happened last this week. Bob Bartels lead a diverse group of 15 people in prayer in the sanctuary. Dwight Enfield lead a small group via zoom at the same time.
Daily at noon - we ask that the entire Alive In Christ family enter into a moment of prayer at noon each day. Each day we ask that you pray the linked verses of scripture with us as well as the daily prayer of:

In addition to the linked PDF, we will also be sharing the daily scripture for prayer in The Year Following Jesus Facebook Group and can send you a daily reminder through the AIC App (must opt in to receive the reminder - see below).
- You can opt into daily prayer app notification by opening the app, clicking on the hamburger menu (3 lines at top), then "settings", and finally "notifications". You can then turn on the "Daily Pray Reminder - 2021 Vision..." notification and any other notifications that you would like to see. If you need more help setting up the notifications on the App, this short video will walk you through it.

We will continue this daily prayer time from July 19th up until the August 23rd when the Vision Team meets for the final time.

Weekly Sunday Mornings - an elder will lead prayer for the upcoming service and ministries in room 11 each Sunday from 8:00-8:20am.
November 14th Christian Growth Hour - we will be holding a prayer vigil in preparation for the November 21st voters meeting.

Congregation Vision Meeting

On July 19th approximately 100 members and attendees of Alive In Christ came together to share a meal and participate in the Visioning Process. Various teams came together to create a great evening of food, fellowship, and visioning. Thank you to everyone who helped cook, clean, serve and welcome attendees to the event.

Table Discussions

After the meal, Mark Frith led the attendees in table discussions to further the visioning process. Tables discussed/answered the following questions:

What is your greatest hope for humans who live around the Alive In Christ campus and those around your own home and greater Columbia area?
What is your greatest hope for the members and guests of Alive In Christ Lutheran Church?
Describe the following groups of people:
- Humans who live around the Alive In Christ campus.
- The Humans who live around your home.
Who are we (Alive In Christ), right now, in relationship to...
- People living around the campus of Alive In Christ?
- People Living around your personal home?
Who should we be to the people above?

Survey Results
Reverend Frith then presented a brief summary of the survey results. Here are a few of those results:

What is the one thing that AIC does best? Top answers:
- Preaching/Teaching/Focus on Word
- Welcoming/Hospitality
- Music & Worship
If money were not an issue what could AIC add to its ministry? Top answers:
- Additional Staffing
- Children's Ministry/Youth Ministry
- Outreach to Community
Think of the community surrounding AIC, what do you see as the greatest need?
- Discipleship
- Outreach to Community
- Jesus

Final Activity
Before leaving each attendee was asked to take a moment to reflect on what they hope to see Alive In Christ do over the next 5 years and to write a purpose statement for Alive In Christ. The visioning team will be pouring over and praying over this information in the next couple of weeks leading up to their next meeting.