This past Sunday the community was presented with what the staff of Northbridge identified as the six main aspirations of what the community would like to be and do that came out of the previous Sunday’s individual responses to the two focus questions from the week before. (see post below for previous Sunday’s focus questions)
The community was presented with power point slides that showed the 6 aspirations and how all of the individual words from the community’s responses the week before fit under these six aspirations.
How these aspirations can be understood then is that:
Northbridge aspires to be about: (note that the words in parenthesis following the aspirations are examples of the responses from the previous Sunday’s communal discussion that the six aspirations derive from…)
1. Neighbor Awareness-Directed towards supporting those outside NB
(tolerant, reaching out, multicultural, reconciling, other-aware, welcoming)
2. Communal Awareness-Directed towards supporting each other @ NB
(deep friendships, supportive, vulnerable, child faith development, honest)
3. Self Awareness-Directed towards individual self growth & awareness
(helping us grow, learned, empowered, intentional, fruitful, mature)
4. God-Awareness-Directed towards God & spiritual practices/rituals
(aware of sacredness, holistic worship, contemplative, worshipful, faithful)
5. Challenge-Directed towards being a different church & being stretched
(non-traditional, takes Jesus seriously, justice-oriented, questioning, bold)
6. Celebration-Directed towards being celebratory & enjoyable
(motivational, musical, creative, free-spirited, whole, healthy, fun)
After being presented with these aspirations the community was given time to reflect and share their thoughts, questions, and add if anything seemed to be missing from them.
Next Sunday we will continue the discussion with the next step in this phase and we will continue to use the information gained from previous weeks like these 6 aspirations to guide us forward.
Again, please feel free to leave a comment to share your thoughts and feedback and we hope to see you Sunday as we have our week 3 discussion together!
Shane
