The Road Ahead: What is This?

“The Road Ahead!” We’ve all heard this catchy phrase flying around the church lately, but what are we talking about?

Is it the name of our newest small group, a map to get to the church, maybe a new ice cream flavor? Is it a catchy book about future technology written in 1995 by Bill Gates (well, yes, yes, it actually is)?!

No, that’s not what we’re talking about. Let us share with you what First Presbyterian’s “Road Ahead,” is really all about.

In a nutshell, “The Road Ahead,” is about our church’s future. It began with an opportunity to participate in an activity called, “Crossroads.” You may remember this as the time we invited our church to take surveys about your involvement, various programs, and their effectiveness. Why would we do this? Are we concerned about the longevity of our church? Well, yes, we are always concerned, however, not in a bad way. Our church continues to thrive, building new relationships and nurturing our congregation continually, but what better time to take a look at our future than when we are strong? We wanted to know what our greatest strengths were, where we needed to look for improvement and how we wanted to shape our programs for a continued strong future.

After compiling all the data from the “Crossroads,” surveys, we found trends in what you were saying mattered most: relationships, supporting our children, multi-generational worship, serving others, etc. It was exciting to see all of these values take shape, so much so that we compiled a list of FPC’s core values based on what we were hearing. In a way this gave our church its own identity.

Yes we are still a church, God and our faith are very evident in all we do, but our other values help define what we care about most, and consequently where our energy in future projects should lie.

So what are these values? Shouldn’t everyone know about them by now? Well, that’s where “The Road Ahead,” comes in!

“The Road Ahead,” is looking toward the metaphorical road that lies before our church stretching out into our future.

It’s outlining a plan for what we want to achieve and how to get there. Our very first step on this road is bringing all of you up to speed on what we found in our “Crossroads” data, the values we’ve outlined because of it, and where we believe this is leading our church. Starting in July we began, very basically, announcing our values at the beginning of each church service. This will continue through August and into our “Kick-Off” Sunday on September 8th. At that point, we will be launching into a more in-depth sermon series based on these values, showing their importance to our church and how we plan on using them as we look toward our future.

There you have it! “The Road Ahead,” is our church’s plan to lead us into the future. It is exciting, inspired, and filled with anticipation and dreams while being fixed on God, our faith and our values.

Grace & Peace,

“The Road Ahead” Steering Team