Choose Life

Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

In the above passage God gave the law to the Israelites the second time just prior to them entering the Promised Land. On this occasion he gave them a choice with consequences for the choice they had to make. Choose life and its blessing or death and its curses. This past week the leaders of our congregation gathered to create a strategic plan to lengthen the life and vitality of Covenant Church. Our vision statement is “Being Christ’s light in the Community and Beyond.” This implies that our church will be intentional about sharing and spreading the love of Christ by modeling his behavior both within the walls of our edifice and outside into the world. To accomplish the vision, we have created a four-pronged mission statement to Invite, Welcome, Nurture, and Serve.

• To Invite: Inviting involves fostering relationships outside the church that will lead to bringing new persons to the church through word of mouth, events, and advertising.
• To Welcome: Once people have been invited, we will make sure they feel welcomed. And to accomplish this we will create a set of practices to assure people who visit our church feel welcome from the moment they enter until they exit.
• To Nurture: Nurture will focus on teachings to strengthen the spiritual growth of our members of all ages.
• To Serve: This involves creating new ways for all members to enthusiastically serve in the church based on their God given gifts and talents.

As the leadership team continues to map out the specific details, I ask each member to prayer for the spiritual, numerical, and relational growth of Covenant church. God continues to call his people to choose life. And we as a church embrace that choice and choose to live and thrive, and, as we grow, God gets the glory.