Vision Series 2022, Pt. 5: Community Commitments
Take Communion
(Leader: Begin your gathering together by taking communion together, whether as a full meal together or some version of the bread and the cup before or after your meal. If you don’t already have a Communion liturgy, take a moment to be still and have people reflect with gratitude on the prompt: Where did God go above-and-beyond today or this week? After some time in silence, have a few people share their prayers of gratitude to God.)
Review The Last Practice
How has Morning Prayer through the Lord’s Prayer been going for you?
How has Midday Prayer for the Lost been going for you?
How has Evening Prayer of Gratitude been going for you?
Read This Overview Aloud Together
Think of our Community like a boat out on the ocean: everyone has a paddle and we’re working together to go somewhere. But that can only work if everyone agrees on where we’re headed. If we all have a different understanding of or vision for where our boat is going, we’ll likely just paddle in circles. To make sure we’re not going in circles, every Fall, during the Vision Series, each Bridgetown Community sets aside intentional time to return to the Commitments and to have a conversation about what’s going well and where we can improve. And tonight is that night!
Do This Practice Tonight
To commit to something is to actively participate in it – to show up in a way that you are engaged and contributing. To that end, the Community Commitments have been organized into 4 categories – active participation in your own spiritual formation, active participation in Bridgetown Church, active participation in your Community, and active participation in Portland. If we are to succeed in our goal of practicing the way of Jesus together in Portland, we will need to each be actively participating in these four categories.
Read Over the Commitments – Let’s all open up the Community Commitments and then I’ll read each out loud to remind us what our Community is organized around.
Discuss the Following Questions – Next, let’s have a discussion about the Community Commitments and our active participation in them:
Reflect on what your commitment to Community has done for you in this last season. How has it shaped you or changed you?
Looking again at the Commitments, what do you feel like we do well as a Community? Where can we improve?
Which Commitments have been more challenging for you, personally, in this last season?
In light of all this, where do we want to grow in these Commitments as a Community? How can each of us, individually, be a part of that?
Read The Practice for the Week Ahead
This week, we want to continue working on two Commitments. First, one of the newer Commitments to join the list: integrating the Daily Prayer Rhythm into your life. We want to build the habit of communing with God in the normal parts of our lives, so that we can grow in intimacy with him and participate in his coming Kingdom in and around us. So even if for a minute or two, try to make time to pray the Lord’s Prayer in the morning, to pray for the lost at midday, and to pray gratitude in the evening.
Second: involvement in your Community’s monthly justice initiative. We want to continue working towards and participating in doing something each month, as a Community, that works towards justice and mercy in our city. As a reminder, if we haven’t picked a mission yet, those can be found at bridgetown.church/proximity
End in Prayer
(Leader: Close your time together in prayer, asking that God would help us train to be the kinds of people who order our lives by rebellious fidelity to Jesus and that we would see his Kingdom break into our lives, our city, and our world.)