Dear Church Family,

This past Sunday we held our annual meeting to reflect on where we have seen God at work in 2019 and to talk about where God is leading us in 2020 and beyond. At the meeting, elders shared that we believe we need to do four things for us to clarify our identity and direction as a church community:

1. We need to reframe our mission.
2. We need to recast vision.
3. We need to rearticulate our values.
4. We need to change our church name.

For those of you who were not able to attend the meeting, I'd like to unpack how we prayerfully came to that decision.

Last July the elders began engaging in active listening so that we could better understand who we are and where we want to go as a church family. We listened to over 60 people to gather stories and comments. From those conversations, we generated a narrative of our current shared reality. In November we gathered with over 40 people from our community to process the narrative and get more feedback.

Since November, the elders have been working to name our deep longings as a community and to identify several high-level priorities that can help us move towards our deep longings. The deep longings we identified are as follows: to have deeper roots in the Trinitarian Christian faith, stronger bonds of connection with one another, and to actively engage in compassion and justice locally and globally. If you came to the group listening night I'm sure those three deep longings are not a surprise to you.

Read More  

Hello, Church Family!

Just a reminder that this Sunday, directly following our morning worship service, we are going to have our annual meeting for all people who call Ecclesia Clear Lake home. This is an important meeting where elders will reflect on where we saw God at work in our community in 2019 and where we think God is leading us in 2020. We plan to address the next two steps of the listening exercise (emerging futures/deep longings and priorities that help us move towards our deep longings). The meeting should take about 45 minutes. We have childcare for 5 years and younger.

Read More  

Hello, Church Family!

On February 2 we are going to have our annual meeting for all people who call Ecclesia Clear Lake home. This is an important meeting where elders will reflect on where we saw God at work in our community in 2019 and where we think God is leading us in 2020. We plan to address the next two steps of the listening exercise (emerging futures/deep longings and priorities that help us move towards our deep longings). The meeting should take about 45 minutes. We have childcare for 5 years and younger.

It's a joy and pleasure to be your pastor. Please let me know how I can be praying for you.

Sincerely,

Pastor Coby

Read More  

Hello, Church Family! During the worship service on Sunday, I shared some exciting news. Our staff at ECL will be growing! On January 8, Ashley Kinsel will join the staff for a part-time combination position, Director of Youth Ministry and Director of Operations.

Director of Youth Ministry
We have a growing youth ministry with some incredible youth ministry volunteers. Ashley will work around five hours a week to organize the youth ministry, invest in our adult leaders, and pour into our students.

Director of Operations
After participating in the listening exercises, it became clear that we needed a person to help create infrastructure and systems that will better allow us to meet our deep longings and our emerging futures. Ashley will spend approximately five hours a week providing vision, leadership, and structure for facilities management, communications, and hospitality.

Read More