The Well

Summer isn’t over. 

But for all practical purposes it is. The air is already a bit cooler. Of course, that’s is not saying much…

The kids are back in school – some for their first day ever (you’ve probably seen those super cute pics on Facebook). The college students are back in session – probably already starting their all-nighters fueled by coffee and Peach Iced Tea from WaWa.

This has been a good summer for us at The Well. We’ve love each other well. We’ve said goodbye to some close friends and have welcomed a few new ones into our community.

Over the summer we also had some excellent conversations about our worship together on Sunday mornings. We also talked about being more intentional about shepherding and leading our kids.

Here are some of the things we discussed:

Starting on time! 

This is a simple thing but still important. Whether we use a countdown timer or not (Personally, I’ve found that the countdown timer on my iPhone works pretty darn well so far) starting when we say we are going to start helps us focus on what we are here for – worshipping Jesus Christ!

Starting on time together!

It’s one thing to start on time. It’s another to start on time together. We talked a bit this summer about how our value for community has often overwhelmed our value of worship. This has looked like a fragmented beginning to our service where some of us are engaged in conversations while others are singing. We talked about not wanting to sacrifice our worship together for the sake of much needed conversation -  or our much needed conversation for the sake of worship. So we committed to worshiping together and making time our conversations before and after the gatherings.  In this, we talked about the need to put away food before the gathering began in order to signal the start of the gathering. One of the things we noticed this summer was that this didn’t seem immediately necessary. We were able to start on time without hiding the yummy food but we’ll play this one by ear as we go into the fall.

Leading our children in worship – as children

Let’s face it – we have a ton of children around The Well and we are only going to have more! We talked about needing to be intentional about leading our children in worship. This means we committed to helping them participate in what’s going on up front. For some this might mean sitting in a row with their parents and for others this might mean having them participate by dancing, drawing or painting in the back. The main point is that these children are supervised and being led.

Parenting in community

Kids are kids and often do childish things. Like punch each other or throw things at each other’s heads. Generally speaking this isn’t good. We want our children to have fun when they are with their church community, but we also want to make sure that kids aren’t getting picked-on or hurt. Together, the parents invited others (even those without kids) to help out when they see something going on that doesn’t look safe or fair. We said if you have a relationship with the child that you can feel free to correct him/her and then inform their parents of what was going on.  If you don’t have a relationship with the child, it would be appreciated if you could find a parent who looks like they do so that they can be sure to deal with whatever is going on.

This fall we have some good things in store. 

• We have new people we will asked to welcome into our community…let’s welcome them with the love of Christ.
• We have opportunities for learning and discipleship….let’s engage our hearts, souls and minds in pursuing Christ.
• We will have monthly opportunities to serve others in need…let’s serve others with the love of Christ. 
• We will have opportunities to love and serve each other…let’s care for each other as family. 

As a leadership team we are focusing much of our efforts around being shaped for mission. We want to invite you to be pro-active in your own discipleship. We cannot make you be a disciple but we can create opportunities

As Dallas Willard has said, “No matter what we do we are discipled by something or someone.” The question is wether we or not we are being discipled by Jesus or the world.  If we are going to be a church for the sake of others we need to be taking our own discipleship seriously.

Let’s do just that! Looking forward to another awesome year together.

Todd Hiestand and the Ministry Leadership Team