Discerning God’s Call provides support for designing and facilitating communal vision discernment in your church. A real payoff from a time of vision discernment is cultivating a deeper level of togetherness – experiencing community together – as you draw one another in and draw out one another’s gifts. Through congregational practices vision is discovered, received, shared, …and then expressed as a portrait of your church’s calling. The fruit of a time of congregational visioning is not in having another vision statement but running with a new sense of your church’s calling and purpose and beginning to live it out concretely.
Discerning God’s Call involves a set of five practices that enable the community of faith to discern and embrace a compelling understanding of God’s purpose for them. It provides content and processes creating communal discernment opportunities for church members and leaders to step back and listen to one another, sharing hopes and exploring dreams. It provides resources to encounter Jesus’ model for community in Scripture that results in new understandings of the nature and purpose of the church. Communal discernment involves movement and passion; it is a process of studying, praying, singing, and dreaming together.