Reforming – Colonial Church

For over 70 years, Colonial Church has served God and His people within our congregation, in our community and around the world. Great things have happened here. And at this time in our life together, one question has emerged. What is God calling us to next?

The Council and ministerial staff believe God is calling us now to engage in a season of self-reflection, discernment and visioning. We are calling this process ReForming. Its goals are two-fold -to help us grasp what God is currently doing in our midst, and to figure out together what God is calling us to next.

Please use the graphic below to see where we are at in the ReForming process.

Spiritual Practice

Nothing is more important to ReForming than prayer. Nothing. For our church, for the Visioning Team and for ourselves. As we seek for ReForm individually and as a community of faith, we are offering you a series of spiritual reflections. You can use all 13 reflections in any order, or pick and choose those that speak to you. You can use them with a group or in your personal time with God. Our deepest desire is that they would help to direct our hearts and minds to the Creator and Redeemer of us all.

Click here to access your spiritual guide.

Discovery Phase

We are finished with the Discovery Phase of ReForming. Please see the banner on the right-hand side of this page for content from the Discovery Presentation on January 14th.

Visioning Phase

The Visioning Phase is now complete! Save the date for September 9th as we will be sharing what we feel God is calling us to next!

WHAT WE JUST EXPERIENCED: The purpose of the Visioning Phase was to begin to answer the question: What is God calling us to next? A major focus of this phase were a series of three, 1.5-day Visioning Retreats: March 3-4, April 14-15, and May 19-20. 28 Colonial members comprised our Visioning Team and participated in the retreats. Please click here to see a list of these team members!

The retreats were facilitated by Kevin Graham Ford, co-founder of TAG, our consulting partner. The goals of the retreats were to:

articulate and sharpen Colonial’s core ideology or purpose (its unique mission and its defining and enduring values and commitments)
agree on steps to better align Colonial’s core purpose with all aspects of its identity (e.g., culture, infrastructure, brand and reputation)
develop a vision for Colonial’s future, including possible action steps and initiatives for bringing Colonial’s unique capabilities to important Kingdom-building work, which will be recommended to the members of Colonial Church for their consideration and support.

Including a small group of current leaders—our ministers and key elected committee leaders—approximately 25 individuals from Colonial worked together through the three retreats to achieve these goals. Many thanks to all who submitted nominations for the ReForming Visioning Team. Dozens of faithful Colonial members were suggested! The Visioning Team was commissioned on January 14th.

What We Are Reading

Do you want to know more about the changes in the church and our culture that are impacting many congregations, including Colonial? Are you interested in learning more about some of the ideas that lay the groundwork for ReForming? Lay leaders and others in our community are reading several such books. We invite you to read them as well, and to join in the conversation. These books are:

“Pursuing God’s Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups,” by Ruth Haley Barton

“Transforming Church: Bringing Out the Good to Get to Great,” by Kevin G. Ford

“Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territories,” by Tod Bolsinger

Transforming the Church Video

The video below is from our partners at TAG Consulting. Kevin Ford shares about the TAG process and the TCI survey that is the first step in the ReForming process.