Gethsemane United Methodist Church held its 2nd annual Leadership Summit Friday, February 9th through Saturday, February 10th held at the Gaithersburg Marriott.
The purpose of this year’s Leadership Summit was to discern the future of Gethsemane to identify the Church’s mission, vision, and value. During this process we learned that identifying God’s purpose for our church and for our lives is hard work and it takes patience, clear intention, and steadfastness. By the end of the weekend, we explored Gethsemane’s core values and church identified its Core values. Our core values are Love, Respect, Worship, Discipleship, and Community.
Reverend Carey James, Lead Pastor of Sharp Street United Methodist Church in Baltimore, MD served as the facilitator for the weekend. He reminded us that our mission is what we will do to live into our vision and what is our priorities. Our Values are the behaviors and actions that will guide our behaviors.
On Friday we looked at what it means to be a healthy church and identified the signs of a healthy and vital church. Healthy churches are churches are places where God is revered, respect exists for God, others, ourselves, and our surroundings.
On Saturday we explored the importance of a clear and articulate vision for church. Mrs. Georgia Davis, defined a vision as a projected image for future results. Our first exercise for the day revealed how vision and instruction without clarity can cause varying results and interpretations.