Upper Room - A community loving God and others in the rhythm of Jesus  

Upper Room Community Life

Background

From November 2008 through February 2009, the Upper Room staff and Initiation Team listened to the voices of the Upper Room community through a survey, input groups, and the Chapter 3 Vision Refocusing process. As we spent time listening, it became obvious to us that people were longing for a deeper sense of connectedness within our community.

What We Heard

We heard that people desire a pastoral presence and connection to the Upper Room in areas such as: marriage; baptism, reaffirmation of baptism, and infant dedication; prayer support; and and emergency pastoral response system. You told us that connecting to others in the Upper Room is important, especially on Sunday nights. And you expressed a desire to meet the practical needs of people in need within our own community.

The Result

As a result of listening to our community, we developed the goal of “Fostering a sense of family and belonging where people can know and be known” and a Community Life MAP with 4 Core Responsibilities:

  1. Sunday Night Community
  2. Practical Care
  3. Support Resources
  4. Pastoral Ministry

Within each Core Responsibility is an individual action plan and key markers to help us measure progress in achieving our goal. (Click here for more MAP details.)

Update on Key Markers

Sunday Night Community

  1. Under Kathy Jones’ leadership, our Host Teams have gotten to know our new worship space over the past 2 months and have established a welcoming presence in helping people locate seats in the sanctuary and find their way around the new building.
  2. We are in the process of identifying a more visible and accessible location for an Upper Room Information Table that will be staffed by a staff member and a volunteer before and after each worship gathering.
  3. We have developed a prayer card that will allow community members to share their prayer requests and celebrations with our staff and Prayer Team. We are currently discerning how to integrate these new prayer cards within our Sunday worship gatherings.
  4. We will spend time this summer developing a plan and volunteer leadership teams for Sunday night community meals between our worship gatherings starting in the fall.
  5. In addition to these steps, we also intentionally planned elements of our Renovation message series (April 19-May 24) to foster a sense of family. Things like name tags, greeting and talking with people sitting around you, bringing May baskets to our neighbors in St. Louis Park, and planning a neighborhood block party, have all helped to contribute to a deeper sense of connectedness within our community.
  6. Finally, we have purchased a new online database and we are currently researching its potential to allow our community to connect with other and to make needs known.

Practical Care

  1. We have identified Point Leaders for our Meal and Chore Teams and we have teams of people ready to meet the tangible needs of people in our community. These teams have already had the chance to react to the needs of several people within the community.
  2. Our next steps are to further develop the infrastructure for the teams, to proactively communicate our readiness to serve our community, and to provide our community with a method for making their needs known to our teams.

Support Resources

  1. We have launched version 1.0 of our Online Support Resources Toolbox to give our community access to the type of support (professional counseling, addiction recovery, etc.) that we cannot provide on our own.
  2. In addition, any of our pastors are available to connect with a community member in need. Our pastors are also prepared to respond to emergency situations when they arise through our newly implemented after hours emergency pager.
  3. This summer, we will continue working to expand our Online Support Resources Toolbox, looking to release version 2.0 in the fall.

Pastoral Ministry

  1. We’ve established version 1.0 of our pastoral ministry process in the following areas:
    1. marriage and wedding preparation;
    2. baptism, reaffirmation and dedication;
    3. funeral service planning;
    4. after hours emergency pastoral response pager (effective February);
    5. prayer ministry.
  2. See the Community Life page of our website for more details.
  3. We are continuing to further develop our existing structures in the areas mentioned above in anticipation of launching version 2.0 in the fall.

If you have any questions about the Community Life area of the Upper Room in general or about something that I specifically stated above, please do not hesitate to contact Kathy Jones or Joe McDonald (612-353-5641).