Message from Pastor Emily
If you joined us on Sunday, October 20th, you would have had a chance to hear about the vision that I and your elders have been working on and I am grateful to share it with you! At City Church San Francisco, our vision is: To be a Jesus-centered community, attuned to the activity of the Holy Spirit among us, so that we might courageously participate in God’s work of transformative love throughout San Francisco.
This vision takes shape in four key ways:
Building Jesus-Centered Community. Jesus did not just proclaim a message; he was the message. In a similar way, we want to pair our learnings with practices of living these teachings out through life together.
Cultivating a Holy Imagination through Attunement to the Holy Spirit.We long to increase our spiritual vocabulary, expand our practices and build the capacity for the holy discomfort that comes when we pray risky prayers that lead to transformation.
Create pathways for Courageous Participation. We understand that God’s grace fuels our capacity for courageous participation in being “good news for San Francisco” in every way God leads.
Enacting God’s Transformative Love. We understand that God’s love makes all things new and empowers us to be conduits for God’s life-giving, liberating, and loving vision of wholeness of life for all.
You may view the full vision document here. As I shared in my sermon, this vision is about building a culture and moving through a process of becoming. It is also an invitation for you to show up with the gifts, the intellect, the ideas and the imaginations that you bring to help it take shape. At our congregational gathering, we practiced this by reflecting on questions around tables. Missed it? Add your thoughts and ideas here or feel free to connect with me directly. The responses will shape, guide, and inform our elder and staff imaginations for how we will live into the vision. I will also be sure to share these out with you so that you can hear from one another. Over the next 8 months, we’ll unpack what this vision means and could look like in worship – even as we begin to experiment with practices along the way. For now, you can be part of this vision immediate in two ways:
Commit to being present on Sunday mornings. This is the one space and time where our whole community gathers. If you don’t show up, you will miss seeing the fullness of who you are connected to.
Make a financial commitment. We will hold a financial transparency meeting in a few weeks but take some time to reflect: How is God inviting you – maybe even challenging you – to make a deep financial commitmentto support what God is up to in our midst?
I hope that you are as inspired as I am by what God is already beginning to do among us. Ours is a God who, by the power of the Spirit at work within us, is able to accomplish exceedingly and abundantly far more than we could ask or imagine. I can’t wait to see what emerges!
Faithfully,
Pastor Emily