Yulee Lee, our pastor to children and youth at New Community in Logan Square, led us through an exercise during our staff meeting last week. She guided us in a discussion about personal vocational values.
Our staff is in the midst of forming as a team for this current ministry season. Having added our newest leader a few months ago, we are thinking about developing a team or group culture as pastors at the Logan Square church. This is an area where we’ve experienced a fair amount of change over the almost 11 years I’ve been at the church. Because the group has been different over those years, it feels like a new moment. It certainly is a new group of us since January.
Our emphasis has me thinking through how personal values meets the work of a group. It seems that a person is always bringing himself or herself to a group. The question is usually one of degree. How much am I in this room? How much of me is known by this group? Who am I to this circle? What have I shared and what have I withheld? These are some of the questions during group process. I’m grateful that our congregation’s pastors are engaging with some of them.
Michael Washington 
Your thoughts are interesting as always.I find that an even more important question for me when engaging in the group is “Why are we all here?” For some group meetings the answer is because we got an invite and was told attendance was required. For others it is because I have a personal interest in the process and the outcome. For others it is because we are hoping to get a decision or something else out of the group. There’s a meta reason to gather as a group of leaders but a more important question to me is “Why are we meeting today and not a month from now? What is pressing? What desires do we have or are we all here because we’re required to be?”
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Thank you for the compliment. I resonate with the precision and discernment around what you’re saying. The meta reason really goes at a sensitivity that I value. You’re lifting up an in-the-moment matter. It’s important. It’s discerning, too.
I appreciate you saying so.
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