from March 6, 2011 prayer update

This week I will be participating in what may be the most significant event I will be involved with in 2011. I would welcome your prayers for this event.

For many years ACMC has needed to take a step back and reassess where we are going and how we are seeking to get there. That is now happening.

On March 10-11 five of our ACMC staff members, our boss, and an outside facilitator will be meeting in Orlando to grapple with important issues regarding our future as an organization, with the goal of revisioning and focusing our work.

We will be taking a fresh look at our mission and vision statements, our core values, and our core methodologies as an organization.

We are looking to God to show up and speak with clarity to us regarding these issues. Please pray that our hearts would be prepared and tuned in to the Lord and to each other, and that we would collectively hear from Him.

We have taken several steps to prepare for this time together.
• we have been praying some common prayers
• we have been reflecting on our current mission and vision statements, core values, and methodologies
• we have received written feedback from a survey (and begun to process it) from 45 outside U.S. mission leaders regarding ACMC
• we have read Steve Moore’s new book, While You Were Micro-Sleeping: Fresh Insights on the Changing Face of North American Missions (and we will be interacting around it)
• we have selected a core group of our staff for this initial gathering who will then bring specific recommendations to the rest of our staff
• we have identified a gifted, outside facilitator (Matthew Ellison with 16:15) to lead us thru the process – please pray for Matthew to lead with wisdom and skill

Early in the process some things are already apparent:
• we need to develop a new vision statement
• we need to function more as a team, and less as lone ranger mobilizers
• we need to closely align our individual efforts with our mission and vision statements
• we need to significantly focus our efforts (identify our sweet spot), not broaden them
• we need to do a much better job of connecting with emerging generations (Gen X and millennials)
• we need to move away from methodologies that have become less effective over the years and experiment with new methodologies
• we need to grapple with funding paradigms for current and new staff and for our organization

But we suspect God has more to say to us. Pray that we would hear that this week and that our entire staff would resonate with it and own it. Also pray as we grapple with the implementation details. That will be vital in determining whether we experience meaningful and lasting change as an organization or this becomes another well intentioned conceptualizing exercise that bears little fruit.