Vital Church Initiative Implementation Team Reviews Past Year

T-shirts with Brighton First's mission
statement logo have just arrived!

The Vital Church Initiative (VCI) Implementation Team met on Wednesday, April 20. The team began their meeting with a point-by-point review of the consultation recommendations (see consultation report in PDF form at link on right side of this page). Brighton First's Church Conference voted to adopt the recommendations on April 19, 2015. The team began by celebrating what the congregation has been accomplished over the past year.

This is a partial list:

• Hosted a goal setting workshop and a worship workshop.
• Sent church leaders to various workshops.
• Wrote and adopted vision and mission statements based on our core values.
• Improved communication of VCI progress with Pastor Sherry's blog
• Began work on a mission alignment audit that will be completed this summer
• Reconfigured staff positions to accomplish vision
• Staff completed study and workshop covering "The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team" and have more training planned.
• Hired worship consultant Rev. Cathy Townley
• Made adjustments in worship preparation and leadership to create spiritually moving and transforming worship in all worship services.
• Hired worship leader Mike Tooman to develop a new band-led worship service for 11:00 Sunday mornings, with preparation through the summer and the launch of the service in October 2016.
• Created a Worship Design Team to guide all aspects of worship.
• Created a Hospitality Taskforce led by Larry Job that wrote a plan for hospitality.
• Created a Hospitality Team, led by Olivia Karaska, and implemented intentional improvements in Sunday morning hospitality.
• Created a Discipleship Team, led by Karen Wagg, to create and implement a discipleship program. 
• Hired Director of Discipleship Bob Fuchs to support and guide development of intentional discipleship program
• Completed an all church study and worship series "Just Walk Across the Room"
• Preparing to launch worship series "The Art of Neighboring" worship series in May.
• Introduced a Spiritual Gifts Inventory created by Rev. Loretta Job to the congregation. Over 100 people have completed the inventory and shared the results. The inventory will be used with new members and attendees. Results of the inventory have been entered into a database.

Even with these many significant actions toward vitality, the VCI Implementation Team knows there is still much to do. Critical tasks left to be done include planning and implementing

ongoing leadership training, creating a strategic plan for the church, launching a new worship service and offering significant community outreach events. The VCI Implementation team is committed to seeing these tasks completed within the next year.

If you have questions, please talk to a member of the team: Bob Fuchs, Karen Wagg, Dan Welton, John Phillips, Kris Phillips, Sue Urban, Chris Attarian, or Sherry Parker-Lewis.

Please keep the VCI process in prayer. Through the work accomplished and the ministry to come we are committed to knowing, loving and serving God in the name of Jesus Christ.