Helping Churches Clarify Their Identity
Thriving Essentials, a leadership course produced by Thrive, has been helping congregations discern their identity and sense of mission as they seek to engage in the work God has for them in their various contexts.
On a snowy Saturday in January 2023, for example, 72 people gathered in Minnesota to talk about church identity and missional vision. Anchoring their discussion was the Thriving Essentials leadership course, and the event was a collaborative learning experience hosted at Pease (Minn.) CRC with members of neighboring Bethel CRC in Princeton, Minn., also attending.
Trudy Ash, one of the participants and a member of Pease CRC, explained: “Each table was either all Pease or all Bethel. This allowed for the [participants’] table conversations and sharing times to be about their own church.”
There was also plenty of time for interaction between members of the two congregations during the six-hour meeting.
“There was a lot of participation and a lot of laughter!” Ash recalled. “It was interesting to hear comments and viewpoints from both congregations. Every congregation has a unique personality, and that was evident to all of us as we listened to each other's stories and experiences.”
“I think our [Pease CRC] council thought it would be good for everyone to learn and hear the same things about the four pillars of Thriving Essentials to provide a common context and missional foundation as we moved forward into the future,” Ash commented.
Another example took place on a crisp, fall day in 2024, and that meeting involved a different Bethel CRC, located in Shiprock, N.Mex. Forty people from nine New Mexico congregations, including Zuni CRC, Rehoboth CRC, Sanostee CRC, and Toadlena CRC, joined in the seminar.
The pastor at Bethel, John Greydanus, has plans to retire in early 2025, and he is assisting his congregation with the search process for a new pastor and is helping the church plan for the transition. He connected with Thrive director Lesli van Milligen and scheduled theThriving Essentials event to support his church and several others in Classis Red Mesa.
Although Bethel has always had a missional vision, Greydanus said, he felt the Thriving Essentials course could be useful to help clarify Bethel’s vision in view of his departure. “Twenty years ago we put a lot of time and effort into establishing a vision at Bethel,” he said, “but we needed to enliven it.”
Greydanus heartily endorsed Thriving Essentials. “I would give a ‘hooray’ to the course. There is no doubt about it in my mind,” he said. “The course was definitely something helpful for the churches, and it fit into our continuing education model for the classis.”
Van Milligen led the event at Bethel and described the curriculum's goal: “Thriving Essentials is not a programmatic or cookie-cutter approach to ministry. It seeks to give tools for deep discernment and leadership support. This means that even smaller churches or aging churches or really remote churches can seek the Spirit's direction for what God is calling them to do in each of their unique contexts and be supported to live into that direction.”
Overall, the course takes four hours to complete, and it can be done in one event, in a couple of two-hour sessions, or in four one-hour sessions. Custom church events can take place in person (such as at a Saturday retreat) or online over two or four evenings. Churches interested in scheduling the course can email inquiries to [email protected] or find more information at crcna.org/essentials.
