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Valleyview Update
For a month or so now, our two churches have been formally engaged. The congregation of Valleyview
Chapel overwhelmingly approved the arrangement back in November.
Now, as with any engagement to be married, this is a formal time of getting to know each “family” and imagining what it will be like when we share the same name.
A number of Chapel folk have begun attending Sunday morning in Wadsworth. We have officially begun sharing ministry ideas and DNA with the corresponding areas at Valleyview. Along with our “Free” Galatians sermon series, Valleyview is also having a Galatians Groups experience led by a Chapel couple who live in Wadsworth.
In the months to come, both congregations will be hearing more and more about what this engagement entails. Eventually a formal vote (“I do”) by each church family will be necessary to make the marriage complete. The goal for enfolding Valleyview and making her an official Chapel site is fall 2010.
Preamble
For several years now, The Chapel has responded to the request for help from Valleyview, our daughter church in Wadsworth. They needed help in preaching, leadership and fiduciary matters. It has been a joy to watch this fellowship stabilize and return to a measure of health.
Our Embrace Tomorrow goals of “new lives and new places” have specifically identified the development of new church “sites” outside of our campuses. The "sites" are quasi “church plants” led and maintained by our staff in strategic communities. These goals are key components to reaching new neighborhoods and people for Christ.
Consistent with these goals, the leadership of The Chapel and Valleyview have decided to enter into a formal “engagement” period whereby we will be seriously looking at the possibility of Valleyview becoming an official “site” of The Chapel. During the next year, The Chapel will be working to replicate our core values and ministries in the context of the city of Wadsworth, in an effort to see if this marriage will be blessed by God. Our preaching, many of our ministries and our leadership oversight will become part of Valleyview’s church experience.
On Sunday December 6, the Valleyview congregation will vote to adopt this “engagement” format with The Chapel. Chapel Trustee chairman Randy Fearer and I will be there giving a bit of our site vision and answering questions about the engagement. Below are the stipulations that Valleyview will be agreeing to if they vote in the affirmative. Of course, before Valleyview would ever be officially enfolded into The Chapel as a “site,” a vote by both congregations would need to be held. Certainly, much prayer and due diligence has and will be done as we venture down this path together.
God willing, the greater Wadsworth area will be greatly impacted by the Gospel of Christ through a newly formed Chapel “site” there. May we see many “new lives” committed to Christ as we prayerfully consider Valleyview as a potential “new place” in our embracing of tomorrow.
Read the agreement here.
-Paul
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