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During our time together at the 227th annual conference session, I, along with other conference leaders, shared with you several ways in which the conference was committed to partnering with passionate congregations dedicated to overcoming challenges and pressing on toward Jesus’ goal for us. As a quick reference, these commitments were:

• We are committed to assisting you in setting metrics or goals.
• We are committed to assisting you in developing comprehensive leadership development.
• We are committed to reducing the benevolence factor from 19.5 percent to 16 percent by 2017.
• We are committed to assisting congregations with repurposing their buildings for mission and ministry.
• We are committed to supporting your growth through Immersion Series resources.
• We are committed to strengthening the Gateway system.
• We are committed to helping you improve stewardship in your congregation through the Mid-Atlantic Foundation.
• We are committed to starting 20 new congregations over the next 10 years.

In the spirit of transparency, I will be writing a monthly column to share with you our progress on each of those commitments, so that we can hold each other accountable and support one another as we work together to make disciples for the transformation of the world.

This summer, we have been holding, and will continue to hold, several training events in each region to assist local churches in setting metrics or goals. The trainings are meant to resource you by assisting in the goal setting that the Call to Action ministry planning document asks for. We know that the goals you set need to be based on the gifts and accomplishments that are right for your congregation. That’s why we aren’t setting these for you, but we want to work with you.

I invite you to attend one of these training sessions offered so that you feel comfortable setting goals for your church and ministry. We will take these goals to 2012 general conference session as an offering.

You can visit http://www.bwcumc.org/academy/othertraining to view the training dates and locations and register.

Keep the faith!

John R. Schol