Many of us use maps on our journeys to help plot initial trips, make our way around detours, and find our heading again when we temporarily get off track.  At Creswell Church of Christ our M.A.P. stands for Ministry Action Plan and it charts the course we plan to take.  Our M.A.P. does not define our destination.  It’s just part of the road towards our ultimate mission to “Love God, Live Well, and Laugh Often.  In a way, it’s how we are programming our spiritual GPS for the year.

Our M.A.P. was carefully adapted by our leadership and adopted by our congregation.  It is specific enough to give us direction, but general enough to leave us room for improvement as we continue to petition God and get better directions as the year progresses.

To illustrate the components of our M.A.P., we’ve come up with the acronym P.O.G.G.Y.W.A.   OK, so we confess, we know this is not a real word and, in fact, it sounds kind of silly, but it’s made it easy for us to remember the pieces of our puzzle and we hope it does the same for you.   Let’s zoom in a little on our M.A.P and P.O.G.G.Y.W.A. to better understand our focus:

Prayer – First of all we want to be a congregation that communicates with God.  We want to better understand His will and then pray to be in it.  In addition to our tradition of prayer for each other’s specific needs, we commit to improving our efforts at praying from our church to our community, our country, and our world.  We want our direction to be God’s direction.

Outreach – It is imperative that we reach out to our community and help with our gifts and resources wherever and whenever possible.  We want to find new and innovative ways to effect change that positively affects the people of our community.  Our purpose is to share with others what we’ve found through our relationship with God.  We want to extend our open arms outside of our open doors.

Gifts – One of our main goals for the year is to help the people of our congregation discover and develop their natural talents and gifts.  We want our ministry focus to be born from the talent of our congregation.   One of our greatest desires is to see everyone uniquely fulfilled by their service to the church using their special gifts.

Groups – We would like to see everyone involved in our overall church community.  We enjoy meeting together on Sundays and for our special events.  But, it’s also incredibly important to find groups in the church where belonging becomes even more rewarding.  We never want to lose the whole church dynamic, but we also want to encourage and foster small groups where each person can share and grow.

Young people – We know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God wants us to teach and encourage young people in our church.  If we don’t teach them about God how can they ever make an informed decision to follow Him in their own lives?  We commit to working diligently to provide programs, opportunities, and a big heart for working with children, middle school, high school, and college age young people, and their families, in our church.

Worship – Worshipping God together has always been one of our biggest areas of focus at Creswell Church of Christ.  We want to expand by continuing to modify our service format and emphasis to give people an even better chance to have those “moments” with God when we gather together and when we are apart.  Even though we were created to worship God, we should never worship out of a feeling of obligation.  Instead, worship should become our deepest and sincerest passion.

Assimilation – When many of us first heard this word we started getting thoughts of Star Trek and the Borg taking over the universe forcing the “assimilation” of anyone in their path.  In their case they parrot the mantra “Resistance is futile”.  To be clear, we don’t mean that kind of assimilation.  We know that God gave us free will and the privilege of choosing our direction in life; for or against Him.  There are many valid forms of worship, many churches to consider, and we have the freedom to come and go as we please.  We also know that we don’t have all the answers to the eternal questions.  We commit to doing our best in giving everyone a chance to join in.  We want to see all involved at some level serving in ways that benefit the individual, the church, and our community.  Resistance is not futile, but frankly, we’re not sure why you’d want to resist this kind of opportunity to belong and participate.

There you have it!  Our M.A.P. is not all inclusive and like any journey we may stop along the way to check out the sights, change our direction slightly to avoid bumps, and update our GPS as we receive better information. We hope you will join us in putting Creswell Church of Christ on the M.A.P.