By Dana Allin, Synod Executive for ECO.
Over the next several months, in preparation for our national gathering, we will be focusing our Thursday blog posts on ECO’s eight core values. We will spend a month of Thursdays on each of the values, where I will write an introductory blog post and then other authors will expand upon our Biblical understanding of the value for the next 3-4 weeks. We are excited to dig in together and pray that you will join us in this journey as we strive to stay connected until we see each other in person next January!
The first of our values is:
Jesus-shaped Identity: We believe Jesus Christ must be at the center of our lives and making disciples of Jesus at the core of our ministry.
ECO’s desire for a Jesus-shaped identity seems fairly obvious. As a kid, I would have said “no duh”! But how easy is it to not keep the main thing, the main thing? How easy is it to get so caught up in “doing for the Lord” that we forget to “be with the Lord”? How easy is it to get so caught up doing our 9th annual rummage sale at our church, that we don’t even bother to ask the question, “Is this activity actually helping to making disciples of Jesus”? Or sometimes we even try so hard to put on a technically excellent worship service and yet fail to link people to the One who is truly excellent.
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the louisville sluggers already have the ECO voodoo dolls ready to go…………….
I hope that another core value is the preaching of the Word! I don’t care how well the worship service is scripted and anthems sung, the emphasis must be on preaching from the pulpit! That is what will inspire the congregation and open up the opportunity for them to receive and be moved by the Spirit!! In too many churches the emphasis is otherwise!!!