Saturday, January 24, 2009

District Training Event 2009

Today we had the United Methodist District Training Event for 2009. It was held at Timberlake UMC. We started off the morning with worship.
The keynote message was from our District Superintendent, Rev. Larry Davies. He called us to seek to build the bridge between those in the the church and those outside.

He spoke about using the "5 Practices of Fruitful Congregations" as important stones in building that bridge.
  1. Radical Hospitality
  2. Passionate Worship
  3. Intentional Faith Development
  4. Risk Taking Mission and Service
  5. Extravagant Generosity
From the Mount Airy Charge we had 5 attending; Bill and Stacey Wyatt, Lisa Nuckols, Joanne and me. Each of us attended 2 workshops. Somehow it worked out that we attended workshops that covered the 5 practices.
Bill attended 1) Mission Roundtable and 2) Pastor/Parish Relations: Helping Your pastor and Staff Succeed. Stacey attended 1) Tips from a Fruitful Congregation and 2) Not Your Daddy's Offering Plate. Lisa attended 1) Creating Successful Small Groups and 2) Youth in Missions. Joanne attended 1) Theology of Passionate Worship and 2) The How-To of Passionate Worship. I went to the workshops on 1) Making Disciples and 2) Bridging the Gap: Where are the Young Adults.

After the workshops lunch was provided. We all sat together and shared about our workshops. I think there will be a lot of new ideas and hopefully fruitful ones that will come from what we learned today.

We were the last group to leave the church. They even took our tablecloth while we were still talking. The fact is, we simply were enjoying our time together. We weren't in any hurry for it to end. I call that a productive day.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This turns out to be an amusing post at the end. I also love such productive gatherings.