Who Do You Say We Are Results

We have finally completed our Who Do You Say We Are Process!!

If you weren’t able to be at our reveal party, you missed a fun time!  But even if you weren’t there, we still want everyone to have the results of our process.

Our value statements were ranked as follows in order from top to bottom.

-We value children and youth by helping them to learn the Christian faith as they develop and examine their own faith in a safe community.

-We gather in worship as one to sing, share, connect, learn and grow.

-We care without hesitation through our prayers, presence and provisions.

-We love and accept as Jesus loves and accepts us all.

-We nurture relationships as we experience God through one another.

While the youth and children statement did get ranked at the top with about a 70 point spread between it and our second category (worship), the middle three statements were all within a few points of each other.  The final category (fellowship) was ranked about 30 points below the category above it.  All in all though, they were all fairly close in ranking numbers which, we feel, means that this process really did a good job of identifying areas that are all very important to Forest Park.

 

With these value statements and ranking in mind, we came up with the following tagline.

“Growing Christians”

We felt that this captured Forest Park well in that we are all still growing as Christians (accepting others, worship, through our relationships, etc.) and we try to help and encourage others to grow as Christians (our youth, one another in our relationships, those that we provide care for, etc).

Finally, to represent all of this, we developed a new logo.

This logo has much symbolism.  First of all on a basic level it has a tree which Forest Park has often used to represent ourselves and it also ties into our “Growing Christians” tagline.  As you can see though, two people form the trunk of this tree much like our people form a foundation for Forest Park and are an important part of all of our experiences here.   The people are also the base of the growth that happens here.  If you look closely you can also see that the space between the people and up into the leaves forms the outline of the chalice used to represent Disciples of Christ churches.  The fact that we are Disciples relates to many of our values particularly our acceptance of others so that is an important symbol of identification for us.  The leaves on the tree are different colors which can represent the differences among all of us as well as the various places we all fall in our growth as Christians.  Finally, as you can see one figure is taller than the other. This could symbolize our focus on raising up youth and guiding them in their faith journey or it could just represent guiding and caring for those who are not yet on or are just beginning their faith journey.

Our Who Do You Say We Are committee hopes that you are as excited as we are about the results of this process.  Once again, we could not have done it without everyone’s participation and we thank you greatly for being willing to engage in this process.

We are selling new t-shirts, crew neck sweatshirts, and hoodies.  There are two different designs which you can see as well as pricing information in the Narthex on Sundays.  You can fill out an order form from now until November 15th at church or contact Kim Hull if you don’t have a chance at church.

Also, be sure to check out our new sign with our value statements and logo in the Narthex.  In addition, since an important part of knowing where you are going is knowing where you came from, there is also a new sign detailing Forest Park’s history.

Let us know if you have any questions.  Thank you again for helping us undertake this process!