Putting the Five Practices into practice

Throughout the fall and early spring, our congregation read The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations by Robert Schnase. Bishop Schnase outlines in his book what healthy congregations practice on a regular basis. We read the book, met in small home groups for 5 weeks, listened to a sermon series on the book, ran our stewarship campaign based on this book, and led into a RETHINK CHURCH activity this spring. In the first round of small groups we studied all five of the practices. They are:

• Radical Hospitality
• Passionate Worship
• Intentional Faith Development
• Risk-taking Mission and Service
• Extravagant Generosity

This spring in follow up groups, we broke off into 5 small groups and took a look at only one of the practices. Those groups generated lists of short-term and long-term goals and presented those at the February Church Council meeting. Church Council will look at the long-term goals as part of their strategic planning for this and future years. The committees were tasked with prioritizing the short-term goals that fell within each of their work areas and accomplishing two or three of the items this year. This was our RETHINK CHURCH work - rethinking the goals of our congregation through the lens of The Five Practices.