The Village Renovation

At Annual Vision & Prayer in January, we shared about coming out of a season of building as a church and now moving into a season of establishing. Admittedly, the work of establishing is not as exciting as building — but it’s crucial if we want our church to have a future and be a Gospel presence in San Francisco over a long period of time.

What it means to be in a season of establishing is to have a focus on refinement and alignment. We’re aligning every ministry to the mission and values of Reality, so that every part of our church is moving towards the vision we have in this city: a community following Jesus, seeking renewal in our city.

We’re excited to share with you how we’re currently taking a huge step in establishing our church through aligning our Children’s Ministry, The Village. The life of our children’s ministry is growing, quite literally. In 2017, we dedicated 26 babies, and last year, we dedicated 50 babies. And currently, we average around 120 children per Sunday! There is so much life, and it’s beautiful. Our children are a gift to us, a blessing that we are grateful for and want to honor by stepping into a year-long project of refinement and alignment of The Village which we’re calling, The Village Renovation. 

This year, we are working with a church consulting firm called Ministry Architects to help us establish an organizational foundation for a sustainable children’s ministry that is a place for our children to grow in relational depth with God, one another, and their church community. As we’ve already said… this isn’t the most exhilarating kind of work, but it’s so important for us to establish a place for our children with us today, here and now, which they can then carry on into the future when they’re the adults ministering to the next generation.

With the growth of this ministry, one of the major problems we’ll be solving is one of capacity. We need a long-term infrastructure within a more sustainable ministry model to allow us to care for the growing number of children. Another major challenge we’re taking on is to develop a strategic plan for helping the children become an integral part of the whole church, weaving the children’s ministry into the fabric of the entire church. And this work has already begun. 

Here Is Some of the Progress We’ve Made Since February:

1. The Ministry Architects consultants visited San Francisco to do an assessment of The Village, which involved listening to staff, parents, and Village volunteers in order to identify both the ministry’s assets and challenges. 
2. In February, we held a Village Vision Summit, bringing together parents and Village volunteers to dream, brainstorm, and prayerfully consider our children’s ministry mission statement and values. And here is the mission statement we codified: The Village partners with families to raise kids who love, follow, and share Jesus.
3. Finally, we’ve created two teams of incredible volunteers who are already working to apply the mission and values. First, because we enter new things prayerfully as a church, we formed a Village Prayer Team. This team is committed to praying for our children and this renovation year for the ministry. Second, we formed what we’re calling the Renovation Team! Below are the eight amazingly talented volunteers who have been invested in our children’s spiritual growth for a long time already and have now committed to help carry out the hard work that’s ahead.

The Village Renovation Team

This Renovation process will tackle every aspect that makes up The Village, and we want to share just a few of the exciting goals we’ve set for just this year:

• Leadership Development: creating an ongoing plan for equipping and training all volunteers and a structure that ensures every volunteer is connected to touchpoints of care and development. 
• Forming Deep Connections: developing a game plan for facilitating deep-impact communities for families in order to keep them engaged with each other for years to come, regardless of location.
• Christian Formation Planning: gathering a team for a Christian Formation Summit to discuss the overall learning objectives for our children and how these might be accomplished utilizing curriculum, milestones, and special programming.

As we move forward, here are three ways you can pray for The Village and the Renovation Team:

1. That we would be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, willing to set aside our agenda/timeline in order to be obedient to what the Spirit wants to show us.
2. For endurance and patience for the Renovation Team and all Village volunteers as we try new things.
3. For God’s own inspiration and creativity to direct our renovation process.

Thank you for reading! We hope you’re as excited about this process as we are. If you have any questions, please email children@realitysf.com.