News from The Northwest Conference

For staff members and leaders

of Northwest Conference churches

Pastor's Perspective

The soul is shy

By Jeff Burton, Lead Pastor, Lakeview Covenant Church in Duluth, MN

On Oct. 5, 2012, I finished a project that has been 5 years in process; hiking the Superior Hiking Trail with a longtime friend. While there are many things about the experience of those 218 miles that left an impression on me, one might surprise you. It was shocking how little wildlife we saw.

In Duluth it is common to see deer, fox, skunk and even bear on occasion (I recently had to share a sidewalk with a bear). I just assumed that on the trail, in the wild, there would be even more. Animals in the wild are very shy. By hiking with a partner, the combined noise of our steps and our conversations kept the animals hiding.

Peter Sung, at our NWC Ministerial Retreat, said "the soul is shy." In the process of reading a book called "Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership" by Ruth Haley Barton, I came across the longer quote that Peter was referring to. It is from "A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life" by Parker Palmer. "The soul is like a wild animal-tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy. It knows how to survive in hard places. But it is also shy. Just like a wild animal, it seeks safety in the dense underbrush."

The noise and chaos surrounding church leaders today often sends the leader's soul into the underbrush. We are visible, but our souls are hiding. Sometimes the soul hiding from the demands of ministry morphs into the soul hiding from God. Take care that in trying to hide your soul from the chaos you do not hide your soul from the Logos. A close relationship with Jesus is our greatest leadership asset.

P.S. Don't hike alone.

Free Advent calendar available

Looking for something to recommend for your students or their families for Advent this season? Check out this free Advent Calendar designed by fellow Covenanter Sarah Johnson.

Coaching

Bringing out the best in others

Every person who pastors a church, leads a committee or ministry, or works alongside others, needs to understand that they are at some time going to find themselves coaching. Good coaching brings out the best in others and provides a pathway for self-discovery of underutilized gifts, talents and abilities.

What Coaching is not ...

Coaching is not telling people what to do
It is not sharing all of your life experiences and stories
It is not mentoring, spiritual direction, supervision or counseling
It is not directive
An agenda-laden experience
It is not about prescribing results

So what is coaching? "Christian coaching is an ongoing, intentional conversation that empowers a person or group to fully live out God's calling" (Dr. Keith Webb).

Coaching involves ...

Listening-and very little talking
Inquiry-asking powerful questions to provoke reflection, change and insights
Feedback-providing someone with useful information to help them improve and develop
Expanding-Facilitating increased awareness and broader perspective to move an individual toward action
Focusing-Designing effective action plans leading to agreed-upon coaching results
Follow-up-supporting the individual through implementation and ongoing learning.

"You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself" (Galileo Galilei, Italian astronomer and physicist, 1564-1642).

Communications Corner

Great social media sizing chart

By Bryan Malley, Director of Communications

My brother, a fellow designer, recently passed me the link below, which is an extremely handy infographic about sizing graphics to optimize the tools in the major social media websites. Each platform has pretty specific size requirements in order to optimize image quality.

Check out the Ultimate Social Media Sizing Chart at Media Bistro.

Covenant Trust Company

End-of-year financial clean up

It's hard to believe, but 2012 is almost over! Throughout the year, you may have accumulated receipts, bills, and other similar documents. With 2013 closing in, now is a good time to organize it all. While you're at it, take the time to review your credit report and estate planning documents if you have yet to do so in 2012.

Organize

Decide what personal and financial documents you need to keep and what you can toss (we recommend cross-shredding). Receipts for non-returnable/non-warrantied minor purchases can be discarded. Monthly and quarterly statements for financial accounts are not needed once you have your annual statements.

Once you've reduced the paperwork, organize the remaining documents by type: Personal (e.g., will); Financial (e.g., retirement account statements); Housing (e.g., property tax receipts); Insurance (e.g., property insurance); and Tax (e.g., charitable gift records).

Consider purchasing a scanner to keep electronic records to back up your documents -- or in some cases, replace hard copies to reduce the amount of paper you have.

Credit Report

It's important to review your credit report annually to ensure it's correct. Inaccuracies could negatively affect loan applications and might also be an indication of identity theft.

Estate planning

As with your credit report, regularly checking your estate planning documents is important. By checking these annually, you can consider how events that occurred in the past year might affect your estate plans.

For more tips and help with your financial end-of-year clean up, contact one of our local Financial Services Representatives:

Kevin Lawson, CFP®, 1-877-222-3960 or kelawson@CovenantTrust.com

Steve Allison, ChFC, 1-877-768-1766 or srallison@CovenantTrust.com

We'd love to help you close out 2012 properly so you can start 2013 off right.

Please visit http://www.covenanttrust.com/news/ to read more.

Covenant Kids Congo:

Sponsor a Child. Transform a Community.

CKC 2012 Northwest Conference churches, members and attendees have an opportunity to stand alongside our Congolese friends in the remote area of Congo known as Equateur Province. Along with them, we are seeking to turn around the most overlooked province in the neediest country of the world.

But it will take all of us, says ECC President Gary Walter. A partnership with World Vision is about to make sure our Congolese friends receive the help they need. Together we can make a difference!

Right now, we ask our NWC churches to schedule a "Hope Sunday" this fall in order to give members and attendees the opportunity to sponsor a child in Congo.

For $40 per month, a Covenant household can make it possible to promote clean water, nutrition, education, health, and economic development; expressing God's love in tangible ways that provide opportunities for the recipients to experience new life in Jesus Christ.

An unprecedented need ... an unprecedented partnership!

Visit the Covenant Kids Congo blog to learn more and sign up to host a "Hope Sunday."

Watch a video introduction to Covenant Kids Congo by ECC staff.

NWC Ministry Priorities series

View, embed and share our new videos on Vimeo

Our 2012 Annual Meeting included the debut of three new videos highlighting the Ministry Priorities of the Northwest Conference. Each video features interview segments with church staff, lay leaders and pastors, intermixed with animations of statistics and key statements designed to help explain each priority.

The videos are designed for use throughout the year in church new member classes, services and other adult education opportunities to help congregations better understand and engage the work of the NWC. The delegates from each church left with a DVD copy of the videos, and the series is available on the NWC web site's video page (www.nwc-cov.org/resources/videos) and Vimeo Channel (http://vimeo.com/channels/northwest).