Grace Fall Update 2020: What’s Been Going On?
Dear Grace Family, having our regular rhythms of church and life disrupted have led to a sense of disconnect for many of us, especially from church. I thought it might be helpful for you to hear some of the things we have been working on in recent months and a look at where we are headed in the months to come.
Staff Update: Our pastoral staff have continued to be hard at work in their areas of ministry. While some areas have slowed a good bit due to restrictions on meeting together, other areas have ramped up.
For example, while Lee Simmons has had less week-in-week-out tasks relating to GraceKids ministry, she has had a significant uptick in our groups ministry. Lee has developed Gathering Groups, online spaces for people who were not already connected to a Missional Community. Right now, there are 7 active Gathering Groups and 10 Missional Communities. We are hoping to transition those Gathering Groups into Missional Communities or move folks in those groups to MCs. She and Jennifer Holloway also worked together to develop our Backyard Church ministry- there are currently 4 BC’s meeting in the city and many GGs and MCs have started meeting for worship in backyards. Lee has trained and equipped several coaches to care for our Missional Community and Gathering Group Leaders, and has continued to refine and focus the vision and mission of our MC Ministry moving forward. She also preached her first sermon this spring, which was tremendously exciting, and has since preached twice more.
Lee has also been doing a phenomenal job of producing a simple, fun, and interactive GraceKids video each week for parents to use with their children that engages the passage and topic that is being preached in the main service. This includes excellent musical worship by many diverse kids worship leaders and an activity designed to help kids interact with the Scriptures. If you have not taken advantage of these videos with your kids, I highly encourage you to do so.
Jennifer Holloway has continued to facilitate our Wednesday Community Fellowship meal, and we are giving out over 200 plates “to go” each Wednesday night. There is a dedicated team of about 8 people who box and hand out all of the meals, and we continue to partner with area churches to provide the food. The Grace members have also been providing a meal each month, from baked ziti to chicken pot pie. Jennifer has also been tasked with leading our Pastoral Staff team through a process of clarifying our discipleship vision and process so that we can more effectively move as a church towards our overall vision. She has been a part of a cohort of about 8 other pastors and then she brings what she learned and leads our staff team. Jennifer has also been preparing to preach her first sermon at Grace, which is very exciting!
Wendell Versaille has really been a hero for our church since COVID hit. As you know, we had only live-streamed two services before March, both of them snow-day services. Since COVID hit, we have developed a robust online presence which involves regular rehearsals and recording on Saturday, as well as hours of editing to get things ready for Sunday’s broadcast. There has been a very steep learning curve, and Wendell has served faithfully and tirelessly to work through a myriad of technical issues. He is also working to get our church ready to livestream services when we are back in the building, a process that is much more complex than you might imagine. We have continued to develop our worship team and have begun introducing songs and choruses in other languages in order to continue to grow in multi-cultural worship. In addition Wendell has helped coordinate worship for our Sunday services on the front lawn.
Eric Anderson has continued his steady and dedicated work to keep our church team humming smoothly. All of our support staff have moved to working remotely, yet we have not missed a beat. This is a testimony to Eric’s excellent and flexible leadership. He has helped the elders and finance team navigate a challenging budget season as giving has understandably waxed and waned. Eric’s wisdom in how to best use the resources God has given has enabled us to make great savings on some expenses during this time. I am also excited that Eric has been an active part of our elder board, and he is now going to be the Pastoral Staff who is a part of our Missions Team, helping that team care for our Faith Promise Missionaries. Eric also meets weekly with Marshall to discuss ministry strategy and how to best care for our church and our staff team.
When I (Marshall Benbow) took on the role of Teaching Pastor, I felt like God wanted me to focus on three main areas: preaching, equipping and developing the pastoral staff, and equipping and developing the elder team. Thankfully each of those things are able to be done during COVID. I have led the elders in a manuscript study of the book of Titus, and we discussed the role, character, and purpose of elders in being lead disciplemakers in the church. I am also meeting one on one with each elder every 8 weeks to shepherd them, and we have begun a book study on Eldership and the Mission of God, which seeks to equip elders to lead a missional church movement.
I continue to meet regularly with each pastoral staff for shepherding and to assist them in thinking through their ministry and their development as ministers. Since COVID began, we have had two sermon series planning times, getting ahead on what to preach in order to disciple our congregation on Sunday mornings. We are excited about what God has led us to teach in the first half of 2021, so stay tuned for more on that!
Elder Update:
As mentioned before, the elders have been using this season to grow in understanding their role and how to live that out in the Body. I have watched them grow in their understanding of discipleship, and I have watched them pursue and love people in our Body. God has been developing them into a prayerful and wise team. We have also onboarded two new elders in the midst of the pandemic, Hank Mangum and Demetrius Ponder, and are now developing an elder training plan which will seek to train and develop new elders all year long. This team meets at least twice a month, sometimes more, and they serve behind the scenes in ways that many people do not see. God has truly blessed us with excellent leaders at Grace.
Youth Update:
Youth ministry is difficult even without a pandemic being in the mix. Our Parent Committee and Youth Leaders have really been doing their best to love kids in this time. We have had some socially-distanced youth nights which have been well-attended, and many leaders have been connecting with and discipling their groups via Zoom. God has truly blessed us with a committed Youth Team.
As you know we have been searching for a youth pastor since Ansel let the elders know last spring that he was leaving staff. Almost 18 months later God has led us to Jake Sorber, who we think will be amazing, and we are hoping that after the congregational vote, Jake and his family can join us in Greensboro early in 2021. I want to give a special thanks to the search team who interviewed about 15 candidates and gave their insight and wisdom throughout this whole process.
Men’s and Women’s Ministry:
The Women’s Ministry has begun offering a Fall Bible study, and our Wednesday night women’s study has continued to meet and grow as disciples learning to live on mission.
The Men’s Team hosted our annual Men’s Weekend here at Grace, with Will Dungee as our speaker. It was a great time as about 30 men gathered to be encouraged by the Word and by simply being together.
Gathering as a Family:
Since moving services online in mid-March, we have worked hard to provide multiple venues for people to gather and hear the Word of God. We have developed our online streaming service and made it increasingly excellent. We also developed Backyard Church communities where people could gather in smaller groups to worship together via the recorded worship service.
This Fall we added in a Front Lawn service for those who wanted a simple worship experience with more people, and we have had 90-100 people attend each week.
We recognize that colder weather will limit meeting together outside, and so we are working to develop an indoor service with limited seating capacity, and we are working to provide indoor space at the church for Backyard Churches who want to still meet together and could use a large room like the Eagle’s Nest or the sanctuary to still be safe while indoors. We are also exploring ways to have Backyard Communities still meet outside and stay warm via heaters.
Living on Mission:
In addition to feeding our WCF guests each week, Grace has been inviting Missional Communities to participate in serving in the Geographic Footprint, the area right around the church. Some of us partnered with Dayna Carr to provide backpacks for kids in Glenwood and to prepare a learning pod for High School students who needed a place to study. We have had at least two MC’s prayer-walk Glenwood, seeking the Kingdom here.
Many of you have been asking about the WE! (Winter Extension) Shelter, which we have hosted at Grace for almost 15 years now. We are still waiting to hear from Greensboro Urban Ministry what their plans are, and we are also exploring ways to keep guests and volunteers safe if we were to be a host site.
Page Break
Micah 6:8
Our church has a clear and unique calling to make disciples who live out the gospel, crossing ethnic and economic lines, for the renewal of the city and the glory of Jesus Christ. That means that we are called to be a reconciling church who seeks to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. In the midst of a very turbulent season for our nation, Grace has continued to engage issues of justice through the Scripture and prayer and presence. We participated with many other churches in a Prayer Protest March downtown, where we interceded for Greensboro down Elm Street and at the Governmental Plaza. We also participated in a Solemn Assembly service of prayer and repentance with many of those same churches this summer. Our staff led a prayer and lament service on a Sunday morning in response to injustice in our nation, and we preached through the book of Micah, which raises issues of injustice and the call of God’s people to be people who lift up the oppressed (mishpat) and live rightly with God and others (tsedekah). We invited our church to read and discuss the book Woke Church by Pastor Eric Mason, and we have also had a team of lay leaders form to lead a series of anti-racism trainings and discussions monthly this Fall.
We hope that you are encouraged to see the man ways God is continuing to move here at Grace!!
God bless you,
Pastor Marshall