The next few weeks here are going to be fun. We are continuning our One Prayer series. 
Next month I will be introducing our membership process - we’re a church that is almost
3 months old and we are not very “high pressure” when it comes to membership but we
have tried to be very intentional in how we communicate what it means to be a part of
our church.

At the beginning of this discussion we started talking about developing a new kind of
membership class that would help people understand more about our church, our history,
our function and give them some opportunities to take some “next steps” in their involvement
here. We knew that we didn’t want to create the typical membership class that was just information
download and as we’ve worked through the process what we’ve come up with is something
we’re calling “identity”.

Here’s the basic concept - our mission statement as a church (the reason we exist) is to “glorify God
by making disciples who love Him completely and others sacrificially.”
There’s lots of stuff packed in to that statment but that’s a discussion for another day.
When we look at that mission statement and start
 dreaming about what it would mean if our church would really take that mission seriously we come
 up with a long-term vision for our church, that we would “Transform Our Region, Transform Our World.”
 Again, lots packed in there but that has really become a tagline for lots of our ministries and activities
 here - people have really latched on to it.

As we’ve looked at that vision we’ve put some thought in to a “vision path” or strategic plan that we
call our 4 I’s - invest, invite, ignite, impact. Here’s a quick rundown of each of those 4 I’s -

• Invest - the expectation that every person in our church would have a growing relationship with
•  someone who would not call themselves a follower of Christ with the intention that we’d be able
•  to share our story and share God’s story
• Invite - the church leadership’s responsibility to provide events across every ministry area
• (kids, youth, adults, etc) which leverage those invest relationships and give people an opportunity
•  to discover more about what it means to follow Christ
• Ignite - the reponsibility on every person in our church to take their own spiritual growth seriously
•  through 3 S’s - Sunday morning, small groups and spiritual disciplines
• Impact - the active “living out” of our faith in our region and in our world

As we started talking about how we were going to kick off this “membership class” 
What better way than Sunday morning?? So we’ve taken the content and adapted it to a
Sunday morning context and will be delivering it over the next four weeks.
 The format will be a little bit different - we will still worship, hear
 from God’s word and meet together to encourage one another but there will be much more interaction
 and feedback from the congregation as well as more direct resourcing for people to help them take a
 “next step” in one or more of these areas. Our goal for this series is that every person who calls Oasis
 their church home would take a next step in their spiritual journey over the next four weeks.

So what do those next steps look like? It might be a commitment to Christ for the first time, baptism,
getting involved in ministry, joining a small group, putting a plan together to make personal Bible reading
a priority, etc etc. Every week we’ll be giving people resources focused on the content of that week that
will help them with that next step.

Join with me the first Sunday of July, as we look at IGNITE and how Sunday morning fits in to that. 

blessings,
Danny