I am concluding my series of remarks on mission in a changing context with a look forward. In my last column I stated that "more important than having a mission statement is having a mission." Our presbytery has a wonderful mission statement. It was adopted in 2000 and is a perfect statement about what a presbytery in the 21st century can and should be. You can link to it, along with "directional signals" for its implementation on our webpage (http://www.presbylh.org/statement-of-mission-and-directional-signals/).

But what lasting impact has the statement accomplished? Rather than embarking on a new way of being the church, over the past ten years or so, our presbytery has responded to our changing mission context like many others in our denomination: reducing staff and program, streamlining committees, and closing small churches which the Presbytery could no longer afford to support with mission dollars. We are now operating on a smaller scale, but the style, purpose, and function of the presbytery hasn't changed. If anything, we have become less effective.

Rather than become an "inside-out" presbytery, directing our energies and resources outward through congregations and networks, we have become increasingly passive, moribund, and resigned, both as congregations and as a presbytery together.

We have despaired of being the church we once were, but haven't imagined what kind of church we are called to become. We have focused on what we lack, rather than on what God has given us. We have been waiting for God in our comfortable, familiar pews instead of going to find God out in the world where God is already at work and inviting us to join in that work.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince, is credited with saying, "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." We have confused the shipyard for the sea, and become more concerned with the design of the ship than venturing to where God is at work.

Beginning with our upcoming Presbytery meeting June 7, we are going to launch "holy conversations" about the future of our presbytery. We are NOT going to write a new mission statement. We are going to dream. We will look for places God is at work in our communities, in our state, in our world and imagine how we might join God in those places. We are going to release the joy of being the church in service to God in the world. We are going to give voice to the yearning of the Spirit.

The model of our future is Jesus, "the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God" (Heb. 12:2). What is the joy God has set before us? What are we willing to put aside, lay down, pick up, or carry in order to obtain that joy?  What gifts has God already given us to use to get to where we are meant to be?

These conversations will form a part of our upcoming presbytery meetings, but we won't get far if they stop there. It is my hope, and, I pray, our hope as a presbytery, that these conversations will ignite similar conversations in each of our churches. Then we will be amazed by what God will do when we set our sights on that vast sea and the distant shore.