ROAD CREW MINUTES, AUGUST 28, 2008

Hello Road Crew.  Thanks to those who came out last night to New Horizons for our late summer Road Crew meeting, especially you busy moms with bunches of kids!  Here are notes from the meeting.

We welcomed Everett McCullough as a new member, benefiting from his testimony and story of how God has been speaking and breathing new life into him.

We spent time looking at the proposed Purpose/Identity statement, the updated version of our Name/Story, our Motto, and a summary of our Call and Mission.  Prior to last night's Road Crew meeting, your Council had carefully worked through five drafts.  Several folks offered helpful feedback and insight, and we made a few adjustments before approving the update which you can read here...  

The hope of this particular project is for members to find these short statements helpful in grasping how Emmaus Road approaches the Great Commandment and Great Commission, in our particular time, place, reflecting the crowd God has brought together.  While the Church's call and mission are clearly expressed in Scripture, we aren't trying to better the Bible in stating who we are and why our church exists; our statements are meant to be local expressions of how we follow the Word.  We discussed the importance of linking our statements back to the foundational, biblical statements, communicating how Emmaus Road stands in the historical stream of orthodoxy.  

We also touched on the duality of our Call and Mission - a regional identity as well as a neighborhood identity.  One of the phrases used - the "Word made flesh" - was discussed, as to it's clarity.  We wondered if it is too insider, too churchy or christianise.  In the end, we decided to keep this phrase from the Gospel of John, as a possible launching point for a conversation about incarnational ministry, both in our daily lives "around the Sound" as well as our church's somewhat institutional role, taking an incarnational form, in our "neighborhood of gathering."

Pastor Likkel will be gradually entering the new statements onto the main web page; some of it has been updated already today.

Two "Green Space" initiatives in Belltown were presented, examples of our congregation functioning as "Spark Plugs" or "Glue" in the context of community development.  See the "Spark Plugs and Glue" article from December '07 here, and read the article about these two specific ideas here.

Pastor Likkel mentioned topics to be addressed at our October 30 Road Crew meeting:

• Leadership Changes, among Elders and Deacons; between now and then, the nomination process will be initiated; look for information in the next couple of weeks.
  
• Community Health: how are you experiencing ministry TOGETHER?  While we tend to view life as "me living my life," the countercultural call of the Gospel, the created order from the beginning, is that we view life as "our life".  How is that being experienced by the people called Emmaus Road?
  
• Budget: time for the annual approval of a new budget for the '08/09 ministry year; look for information this coming month in preparation for the October meeting, discussion, and vote.
  

The meeting ended as it began, with prayer.

Big thanks to Chandra, Nell, and Josiah, who watched our little ones during the meeting.