April 17, 2020 Update
Hello Lift Church,
As this pandemic continues, many of you may have heard challenging news this week. With Mayo Clinic furloughing jobs and adjusting employee benefits and salaries, we realize the reality of our current times: all of you have been affected by the Coronavirus in some way or another. Even though we are distant from each other, remember that we are not alone. Together, we are trusting in God as Psalm 27:13-14 says: “I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
Our hope with this update is that our transparency will be helpful in bringing you clarity. We want to walk through the revitalization plan for Lift Church together. We understand that communication is important now more than ever, so we wanted to share with you phase one of the plan: autopsy without blame.
Too often we want a plan and a solution without taking the time to evaluate how we’ve gotten to our current reality. Phase 1 is an important step to understanding the underlying issues that could continue creating negative patterns in the future, if not addressed now. We don’t want to overlook this phase and attempt to move forward without being clear of the problems that actually need to be solved.
There are two areas of revitalization for our church: The first is with our Senior Pastor, Steve Deedrick. The second is with all of us, as a congregation. Next week, we will share with you the plan that we have for our elders, staff, and Pastor Steve as we all focus on personalizing the revitalization process. This week, we want to share with you what we will be doing as a congregation during this first phase.
As we’ve said before, we are walking through this together. That means we want to hear from you! Beginning this week, we will be meeting with each Lift Group as a way to fully explore an autopsy without blame. The elders are looking forward to meeting with every group over the next few weeks. We will be sending out invites to each group leader, starting today, so please follow up with your leader for more information. If you are not in a group or have any questions, please reach out to us at elders@liftchurch.co.
Some of the questions we will be asking as we spend this time together are:
What are some key points of time in our church’s history?
What are the greatest difficulties our church has faced together?
What decisions have we made together as a church that has had the greatest impact on you personally?
What qualities did we have when our church was most effectively on mission?
As we talk with you about those questions and others, we want to invite you to join us as we step into this next season. It won’t be perfect or easy, but we believe our best days are yet to come because of the grace and work of Jesus Christ in our lives and in this church.
-The Elders of Lift Church