Two weekends ago our Management Team and our church board went on a retreat. We left on Friday night and returned Saturday night.
We went to Olmstead Manor in Ludlow, Pa. We had a great time and got a LOT accomplished!
For the retreat we all read through the book Go Big and allowed it to serve as a guide for our discussions.
Friday evening Pastor Darlene led us in telling our “Northgate stories.” It was great to hear everyone’s Northgate experiences! We heard stories from “Lifers” (Barry Northup) to “One Monthers” (Anthony Hoisington). It was great to hear how Northgate has continued to evolve over time and to hear it from those leaders who have lived through it!
Saturday morning we met for an hour of prayer followed by an hour of breakfast!
Our first session was entitled “Breaking Growth Barriers at Northgate” and was led by Pastor Vern. We discussed the various “barriers” that would prohibit us from continuing to “Bring people to Jesus and build them up in that relationship.”
We settled in on three categories of “barriers”:
1) Physical (e.g. parking, seating, etc.)
2) Structural (e.g. complicated committees, etc.)
3) Attitudinal (e.g. people’s emotions, etc. as the church continues to grow)
Following this session we moved into Part 1 of a discussion entitled “Breaking the Barriers.”
After lunch we had Part 2 of the same discussion.
The walkaways consisted of…
- Some policy adjustments (more about this later) that will allow the Management Team
to more effectively lead in a fast pace environment.
- Discussion about space logistics (e.g. parking, service times, etc.). I will be blogging more
about this later too.
- A discussion about the strategy to help us most effectively “Bring people to Jesus and
build them up in that relationship.” Again, I will blog more about this later.
The bottom line is that we have a GREAT Management Team and Church Board! I love working with these guys!
I’m getting ready to head out to an Administrative Team (i.e. the church board) meeting and I’ll have some more “stuff” to blog about later!
Filed under: Northgate News, church
