Hi everyone,
I wanted to write to you today and share some details about the discipleship survey that I mentioned a few weeks ago on a Sunday morning. We hope as many as possible will take this survey!
I continue to be amazed by the story of Grace Valley CRC. While every church is unique in some ways, Grace Valley seems unique in a lot of ways. Many churches facing the challenges that Grace Valley faced in the last 25 years continued to go down familiar paths. Most have closed or will sometime soon. Grace Valley chose to chart a new direction, and it resulted in new life and new growth.
Another piece of that uniqueness is our Sunday School program. For many churches, Sunday School is more or less a thing of the past. I talk to very few pastors that have much of an adult Sunday School program to speak of. We have continued to have very solid attendance year after year. I think it speaks well of your love for God and God’s word, and your desire to grow in your faith.
Sunday School has been one of our primary discipleship tools, and I think it continues to be a good one.
One of the things as a pastor I think about often is how well I, and the leadership of the church is facilitating the spiritual growth of all of you who call Grace Valley your home church. I’m constantly curious about whether the programs and the structures we have in place are doing the things we hope they are. New growth is a beautiful thing, and our goal as a council is to not take that for granted but continue to evaluate the things we are doing, so that growth can continue for our church and for each individual that is a part of Grace Valley. Discipleship is a particularly difficult thing to measure, because it’s more complicated than taking attendance.
With that in mind, we have received some grant money from our Classis and are using that in partnership with Ascending Leaders to take a Spiritual Life Assessment called Renovo. This is an anonymous survey, that we want as many of our congregation as possible to take. The more people that take it, the better the data we get will help us to develop plans and structures to help you grow in your faith. A few more pieces of information:
The survey should take 25 or minutes or less. Please be as honest as you can, the results are completely anonymous.
This survey is for everyone who attends Grace Valley- even occasionally. If you are hearing about this survey, you are someone we want to take the survey.
There are two different surveys. One is for adults 18 and over, and one is for High School Youth.
If you have an older friend or family member that may be technologically challenged would you be willing to help them take the survey?
If you are unsure about using the technology to take the survey please contact Pastor Eric, and we can try and find a time for someone to help you do it.
Adult survey Link- https://www.research.net/r/RenovoSpiritualLifeInventoryAL1039
High School survey link https://www.research.net/r/GraceValleyCRCHighSchool
If you have any questions, please contact Pastor Eric at 815-408-0512 or eric.gvcrc@gmail.com