I'm spending the week at a conference of the Covenant Church. They often offer opportunities to meet with a spiritual director so I usually take advantage of the offer.
Meeting with a spiritual director might seem a little spooky. It kinda sounds like you close your eyes and some mystic takes you to spiritual places. Not at all. It's very simple. They don't direct you at all. They simply act as facilitators so that you might get a sense of God's direction in your life.
I really like the time. My mind is usually consumed with solving problems or developing Sunday sermons. I don't spend enough time just reflecting. Spiritual direction helps me stop and listen. The director let's you say what's on your mind and occasionally asks a question to draw you out or makes an observation about a theme that they might sense.
This morning when I was with the director I became aware of how passionate I am to take Cedarbrook even deeper. We've spent so much time developing the church. I'm very proud of that but there are three areas I really want to see developed. One is a sense of community. I moved to Wisconsin to live in community. There is something in me that wants to develop that more among the Cedarbrook family. We are rich when we have a strong network of friends.
The second thing is helping people go beyond a Sunday faith and really learn to tap into a moment by moment faith where God is a living reality. I hope that we can help people with spiritual directors, mentors and coaches as well as our current ministry of theophostic prayer. God wants to be more involved in our lives than we realize.
The third area is to offer family oriented teaching; parenting skills, marriage enrichment and financial advice. The fabric of our culture is only as strong as the family. Our faith has a lot to do with family strength.
I pass this on for two reasons; you might want to seek out a spiritual director and you might want to know my vision for the future of Cedarbrook.
The ah-hah for me this morning was that even though we've accomplished a lot at Cedarbrook there are still many things that we haven't accomplished. I need to shift my vision casting from building the tangible infrastructure to less tangible growth areas.
