Hello Discovery Family,

We are so grateful for all of you and your partnership in our mission to help people discover the good news of Jesus. We are seeing the fruit of this mission in various ways, not the least of which is the baptisms we celebrated last month and will celebrate this coming Sunday!

Yesterday was a big day for our church as we announced and taught on the inclusion of women in all levels of leadership at our church, including the role of elder.

If you missed the gathering and want to know more, you can always re-watch the Digital Gathering or listen to the podcast teaching. We also have a digital version of the document we made available yesterday that outlines the process of discernment and convictions we shared.

Over the past two years we have observed a growing readiness for this transition and the overwhelmingly positive response during the last couple of months and yesterday at the gathering seems to affirm this. We recognize there may be lingering questions and clarifications and we are happy to address these with you! Send us an email and we can set up a time to chat more.

As we said, this will not be an immediate transition. As with any elder appointment of qualified men and women there is a time of training, then a time of discernment, followed by community affirmation. We are currently wrapping up the training phase with one cohort and launching a second cohort into the training process. That first cohort will now enter the discernment and affirmation phase, the second will follow in the fall.

Our invitation and encouragement to our whole community is to back these groups of elders-in-training in prayer. We are so excited to see the team grow and lead us deeper into the next season of building a new expression of the Ekklesia (church) to engage our city and world with the good news of Jesus.

In the meantime, there are many other great ways to participate in the mission as we head into the summer: MidSized Communities meet through June, if you haven’t checked one out yet anytime is a good time to jump in. Our next Serve Sunday is coming July 4th! We have short term groups launching this week which you can learn more about here. We also have a summer Cornhole league, so grab a partner and get ready to toss some bags (#FunIsSpiritual)!

We love you guys so much! Grace and Peace,

Scott, Yuan, and Steve