Elders Retreat

Thank you for your prayers over the weekend for the elders. We spent Friday evening receiving summary information from Brian Esterly and a presentation from Frank Harder on how to think through the issues that would be raised. Before those presentations, we spent an hour in prayer.

On Saturday, we went through a list of "issues." This was a list of subjects which the elder surveys (the same as the congregational surveys) had indicated differing opinions among us. I won't be giving that list now until we've had opportunity to think through how to do our public communications. We want to be as open as possible, but we also do not want to create expectations or worries that may not come to fruition. That is another item to pray about for us - finding the right balance of communication.

What I can report is that we had frank discussions, presenting point/counter-point perspectives followed by questions of the presenters and then comments. We even achieved the more difficult result of building mutual respect in the midst of our discussions. I've never been with such a group that could speak so openly with such respect. Please continue to keep us in your prayers. Besides our regularly scheduled Session meetings (4th Tuesdays), we plan to meet again February 18.