Re-Evaluation: We need Coherence

The SGI team is approaching its 1-year mark at Open Door. The team has seen both success and falling short of success. My hunch is, though, that it has all been Spirit work.

The team has a great deal of work before it--and that means now in the present, it has much to do, but it also means that in the next year there is NO shortage of work that needs defining, naming, and assigning accountability for its completion.

In a group of leaders, that is the team itself, we need to find a way to give our vastly different leadership styles, objectives, talents, gifts, and skills, and communication styles a framework on which to cohere. Scripture is, of course, a framework for exactly such a task. Yet, it is not the only tool available to us. And Scripture will not do our work for us.

I ask for your prayers that we find such coherence of mind, body, soul for ourselves and as SGI members.

Happy New Year!

September Meeting

The SGI Team had a very successful meeting last night. While the church as a whole and SGI team members individually had a very very busy and productive summer (even hectic), SGI as a team had some down time. Now that is startng to change. SGI is discerning an exciting path for the remaining months of its charge. Besides checking in with the progress of our fellow ministers, the major accomplishment from the meeting was to begin to really name and own what might become the vision for the church's future that we've been looking for over the past days, weeks, years--longer.

A small group decided to take the task of gathering some background information as well as drafting up a document as a way to discern the shared vision that began to take new and definate shape at the meeting last night. SO WHAT WAS IT? Cheap blogging ploy: talk to an SGI member, she or he I'm sure will tell you all about it! In vague terms, the SGI team is looking to discern a vision that will give focus to Open Door's ministry, but will also potentially shape ministry in the Montgomery/Frederick/Washington Counties of Maryland, as well as even bigger dreams.

October promises to be a very demanding month in ministry at Open Door, one that will be exciting and fun too. Members of the Open Door family are supporting both Open Door and Reel Affirmations in a special event October 17. The SGI Team is partnering with its brothers and sisters in faith to have a strong presence at the Germantown Oktoberfest as well. You'll hear more about all of these things from other ministers.

Back from June Hiatus

June was a busy, busy month for Open Door. The gang that helped ODMCC have a presence at DC Pride really did a great job, all on the heels of a show. Summer is here in full force, with July 4 just behind us. So after a few weeks of our energies going to other projects, it's time to recalibrate ourselves and see what we can do to achieve our planning objectives.


Last Friday, Pastor Rob and I talked about some tasks for the subcommittees, and I'm going to be making individual calls to SGI team members to talk about them, some implementation ideas, and to see how the team feels about those tasks.


Our next meeting is scheduled for Thursday, July 27 at 7PM at the church. We have some work to do to prepare, so please keep us in your prayers--that we are energized, motivated, and focused on successful steps along our path.

May Meeting

The group met for its May meeting after church to review our work. Basically, the play is over, and the congregation is resting from its good work. The official fundraising total will be coming this week, I think. We opened with prayer and went around the table in approximately the following order:

I (Kevin) reported in about the efforts to become a teaching church. I've made contacts with lay leaders at MCCDC through Pastor Candace. After we have done some P.L.A.C.E. work, and I've met 1:1 with the SGI team, I'm expecting to be ready to reinitiate attempts to talk to members of the congregation with past teaching church experiences and then make contact with my new MCCDC friends.

Faith reported in about empowering lay leaders and the P.L.A.C.E. program. SGI team members are invited to participate in the workshop on Saturday, May 20. The subcommittee will use other channels, I think, to communicate the details (though they're welcome to post here too!)

Randy reported in about welcoming guests and reminded us of the wonderful new packets we have.

Adam discussed outreach ideas and is in the process of drafting a strategic ministry plan to guide the outreach efforts of the SGI team. Welcome, Adam! Adam has stepped in to lead the outreach subcommittee. You can learn more about Adam's service by visiting Chi Rho Press, an MCC-specific publishing venture.

Rev. Rob came in to answer questions about P.L.A.C.E. and review the status of the teaching chruch application, which we're praying is on the way to acceptance.

We will meet again in June!

The Show Must Go ON!

Tasha's Follies is one of the strongest links between Open Door and its friends and supporters in the larger community. The chruch ministry teams produce a highly entertaining show that testifies to the fact that the sky's the limit when we work together and honor each others' talents. Learn more about the show by visiting the church's news site.

While having to work at Maryland Day (http://www.marylandday.umd.edu/), I am missing Tasha's Follies. So from a far, may everyone on the cast tonight "break a leg," as the old showtime tradition goes. And GO tech crew!

Y'all are fabulous!

April Meeting Recap

Today's after-worship SGI meeting was short and sweet. Thank goodness! 'Cause we all had met our SGI goals for this meeting and had other pressing ministry activities to attend to. It is very exciting to see the work of each subcommittee pay off so very very well:

The guest packets made their debut today. Now all we have to do is be good stewards of that blessing (getting them in the hands of guests, and tracking what works and what doesn't so we can become better and better hosts when angels come to visit).

The empowering lay ministry group is planning a big event for May 20, you'll hear more about that from folk (Faith, Howard, Rob, I believe) shortly, I think. No matter who you talk to at Open Door, we want to be better and better at energizing each other in the life of the spirit. It's hard to improve what we love so well. So let's keep it up, gang!

The facilities and planning team is still doing the necessary work for finding ways to provide fiscal support for the material and space growth Open Door is considering.

The teaching church application is all but accepted, knock on wood! The committee is making plans for when this change in the church activities happens that we are all familiar with this part of the congregation's mission. Pastor Rob won't be trained until November, so this is one of the less time-sensitive activities.

And the reaching out to the community group is looking at a change in leadership. An aside, several members of the congregation are already working to make ODMCC's fabulous prescence known at some local pride events, and the SGI team is looking to find additional ways to take our congregation's name if not also our message to businesses and organizations in the area.


GOOD WORK one and all.

Prep for April Meeting

Since the last SGI meeting there's been a lot of progress on many fronts including the building of a welcome packet, real concrete plans for the church's participation in community pride day events, our teaching church applications are submitted and pending, and our team has written a couple of items for the Sunday church news insert. I think things are going very very well.

For the next meeting, it's my hope that the team can continue to work to find the best way to measure our progress and that we continue to stay motivated and energized about the work of each subcommittee over the next couple of months. These two goals will remain constant over the life of the SGI Team.

Spiritually, it's better to act, to do and go! where the energy of our ministry takes us than to get too too focused on management-like measurement tools that many folk find draining. That being said, we want to think of this like a 2 year marathon. I'm a swimmer (at least in my head) and I think in terms of the 500m event and I know that even that mid- to short-length event is about breathing, about flip turns, about the economy of each stroke. To shave off even 1 minute from your time is an amazing accomplishment and takes the ability of the swimmer and the coach to refine a bunch of little painful details. Each of us are swimmers and coaches all at the same time, and so we're learning to step by step how to be more and more "strategic" about our ministries.

OK. Point made. ROCK ON OPEN DOOR!