by Christi Emanuel
The Discipleship Pathway Team is actively working on developing a plan that will help guests and members become active thriving Disciples of Christ. This Pathway as expressed through GUMC could include Bible training, mentoring, mission opportunities to express and experience our faith, and group opportunities that would bring us into fellowship with each other. Our hope is to deepen our love for Christ and each other by intentionally creating an environment that would promote spiritual growth and
draw others into our community. The Discipleship Pathway Team of 12 members is representative of all generations and ethnicities and genders in our diverse congregation. We are hopeful that this micro cross section of our church body
will best represent who we are as a community of faith as we endeavor to develop an environment where all can thrive. We have begun our discovery of this Pathway by first engaging the question “Why do we exist?”. Here is the list of what we discovered together:
1. To make fishers of men
2. Seek out others
3. to make the world a better place, to bring the children of God alive
4. to provide a central place of worship and fellowship
5. to introduce others to God and Jesus
6. to provide a safe welcome place and get away from the harsh realities of life
7. to impact all of us and all of our visitors to influence ourselves and pass that influence
on to others. A tapestry interwoven. Impacting people’s lives on all different scales.
8. To provide a spiritual impact on the community through reaching out
9. The leadership and the people choose to be together. Our diversity allows us to welcome and include everyone. Spiritual reciprocity, inclusion.
10. As an image of God. We are image spreaders to project that on others and spread His Word. God created the earth, all things, and God created Gretna.
11. To love God and to love each other
We will meet again on July 11th and continue our discovery by discussing the next two questions: How do we behave? And What do we do?