Survive or Thrive? Fail or Flourish?

"Practice a mindset of love for God and our church, before ourselves." -From our Loving Behavior Covenant (based on Philippians 2:1-5)

Dear Friends,

There are so many great things about Saint Paul Lutheran Church that I am daily, continuing to learn.

The devotion and commitment to this congregation by so many of you is encouraging and promising. As I look ahead to our future together, this kind of devotion and commitment is what will be needed to move from a survive mentality, to a thrive mentality. Or as I said last week, to move from a mentality of scarcity to one of abundance or from failure to flourish. In fact, in addition to the words flourish and abundance, that I mentioned last week you'll hear me use often, I expect you'll also hear me use the word thrive. That is what I see us doing in the months and years to come - thriving and flourishing as a result of God's abundant blessings. Again, however, this only happens with your ongoing devotion, commitment, and I will add - love and prayer.

One of the great things about our church that I have learned, is that we have a Loving Behavior Covenant. In other words, it's an agreed upon promise to love and respect one another, to pray for one another, and to participate fully in the life of our congregation. What a great tool of ministry to have created that will help keep us all accountable to our mission. Thank you for this.

You'll notice in the image above, many words that stand out - particularly the words Love, Respect, Communicate, Pray, Participate, and Forgive. These are such appropriate words and themes necessary for any one, group, family, organization, or congregation to thrive or flourish in abundant ways. In my short time among you, I can say that I have already seen these words and themes lived out among you, in various contexts and settings. Again, thank you for this. I will commit to keeping this Covenant in front of us, along with our mission statement to always "Share Christ's Love With Joy!" so that together, we can flourish and thrive abundantly!

See you in church!

Pastor Dale

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