Pastor Terri Young

JIM OATES… II

For the 47 (yes, 47!) gathered at the Church Office on June 16th to work with Jim Oates, Church Development/ Congregational Coach for the Ohio Conference, UCC, it was a breath of hope. The energy was high; the mood was palpably upbeat, cheerful. People were excited, friendly; there was a buzz in the air.

For two hours, Jim worked with those gathered to begin, I suppose what you might call, a “futuring” [made-up word] process: coming to terms with our core values, how we incarnate these values, in others words, walk our talk, and how we make our decisions according to our core values. The process is designed to promote clarity of thinking and decision making.

For example, if we say that one of our “core values” is children, we can’t plan a future church building without a Sunday School wing/rooms dedicated to our children and youth.

We came up with a list of ten “core values”; this list was reduced to three pairings/tripling of those core values. The ten include: acceptance, children, community, equality, family, friendship, heritage, mission, past, spirituality. The smaller groupings express, to the best of our ability, those things that we highly value as a community.

But after the evening with Jim, some of us pondered our “core values”. For instance, to one member, “past” means the past, the years behind us; to another it means the history that belongs uniquely to EACC. “Equality” for one member means equal access, to another equal ability, to another, our position before God. Do we need to dig deeper in the “core value” garden?

After we explore our “core values” a little more, Jim returns for another 2 hour session on July 14th (again 7-9 pm with refreshments served at 6:30pm). He’ll be with us to begin to ask the harder questions: do we walk our walk? Or just talk? Are we who we “say” we are? Can we give real life examples? Is what we profess congruent with our behavior?
Or are our “core values” what we wish we were (as Jim suggested)? Or better, the way we wish others would see us? Or is what we say we are what we are planning to become tomorrow? It takes real courage, honesty and openness to new insights/ ways of being and relating to get to where we hope to be: ready to make a decision about our future.

In the meantime, Jim’s word to us is this: practice the core values. As you make a decision, ask yourself, am I acting in a way that broadcasts what I stand for? When we make decisions as a church, do our decisions resonate “friendship, acceptance, etc…”? Plan to be with us on July 14th, as we continue our journey of faith together.

Beside you, in Christ, Your interim pastor and friend, Terri

Pastor Terri’s office hours
are (approximately) as follows:

M-T-W: 9:15 - 2:30
Th day off
F: 9:15 -12:30.

Appointments can be made at anytime. Her phone numbers are available through the church office.

An Interview with Pastor Terri

Photo Gallery - Meet Pastor Terri