Your team met with our facilitator John Thornburg on Sunday and shared the stories you gave us with him. He was very impressed with our efforts and with the very real conversations that we had about our stories. It was a collaboration from many areas within the church — leadership teams, UMW circles, several committee meetings, Sunday school classes, and several other groups within the church.
We hope that you had the chance to participate in this, the beginning step in our exploration of what God is calling us to do now. If you haven’t yet participated in the holy conversation, we want you to know that it’s not too late to share your thoughts about our church’s Bible story! We now have a team email address and you can send any questions or comments to us (and, of course feel free to speak to us directly!).
The stories that you gave us and the prayers you are sustaining on our behalf are helping us toward discerning God’s path for our church. We want to first say that without a doubt our team, John Thornburg and Pastor Mai are all certain that God has already planted seeds and talents at Chapel Hill. Our goal is to rediscover what they are and focus them in our efforts. The following Bible stories are the central and most frequently given stories and themes shared with us over the past month:
- Deuteronomy 1-2: Are we wandering in the wilderness like the Israelites?
- Luke 10:38-42: The story of Martha and Mary
- Luke 8:1-15: Parable of the Seed Sower
- John 21: 1-15: The fishermen casting their nets on the wrong side of the boat.
We will continue to think and talk about these stories with you and pray for discernment — God is trying to tell us something, but what? What do you think about them? We are considering different possibilities to present these to you soon. This work that we are all doing as a church is very exciting — this team sees the Holy Spirit at work and we are truly thankful for it.
Please continue to keep us in your prayers as John leads us forward this month with the next step; determining “who we are.” We have several questions to ask you in the upcoming weeks. We encourage you to come and talk to one of us (unless we ask you first) so that this vital work can continue. Thank you for your participation in the Holy Conversation. We can’t do this work without you!
Your Holy Conversations Team
holyconversations@chapelhillumc.org
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