Recovery, Family, Facility

06/10/2020

All things reconciled

In this new era, we are committed to the same questions. How do we love God? How do we grow ourselves? How do we love others? How can we be just and generous? How can we find spiritual strength? 

Lifting our eyes beyond the day to day we are asking you to consider the following colour and texture to our vision over the next 3 years. 

We see these as ‘special features’ to our vision that would flavour and enhance our services and communities. 

Our aims are: (1) Bring hope in recovery, (2) Build a path for family formation, (3) Buy a facility for a house of prayer & ministry.  

1. Bring Hope in Recovery

Relief, wellbeing, new needs and old injustices are on the agenda. A challenge in this pandemic is to respond with care, sensitivity and creativity to love our neighbours well. 

At Grace we want to further celebrate and cultivate a local, regional and global perspective and partnerships as part of the relief effort and recovery phase. 

Fresh leadership capacity and experience can harness the ‘built in’ flexibility of our Community Groups, ministries and partnerships locally, nationally and internationally. Encouragement, equipping and coordination will be needed to sustain and develop our efforts. 

2. Build A Path for Family Formation   

We would like to develop a clear, coherent and inclusive pathway for our children, youth and family ministry. This pathway will integrate the best work done on child development, family support and ministry with young people into the life and rhythms of our local church. 

Working across generations today is much like cross cultural ministry. The digital lifestyle, sexual ethic and systemic concern of young people are significantly different. We see this as a great challenge and one which each person in the church will play an important part. 

3. Buy a Facility for House of Prayer & Ministry 

We want to create a house of prayer for midweek gatherings which include laying on hands, breaking bread, prayer, hugs, and wiping tears which is outside of your usual day to day routine. This kind of facility allows for a special place of prayer and opens a neutral venue for people who can’t minister from home. 

We would like a property through which we can express ‘just stewardship’ together and grow our expression of creation care. It’s also an opportunity to redirect rent towards an investment for future generations in this changing property market.

We have raised £130,000 so far and are excited to see what happens next. 

Our Next Steps

Following our October offering we’ll be ‘taking stock’ as a Leadership Family. We are consulting broadly and beginning to sketch plans, roles, goals, scopes and ideas to empower leadership accordingly to get these projects moving forward. 

As we head into the new year, we are expecting that these ‘seeds of vision’ will being to grow in our hearts and minds and we will begin to take concrete action together.  If you would like to be included in early discussions in one of the three aspects in particular please do be in touch through emailing stuart@gracechurchexeter.org.