Week 6: Our Values
1. What stood out to you from the message this past Sunday? Was there anything that seemed timely or relevant to you? Was there anything that made you uncomfortable or with which you disagreed?
2. Below is a list and explanation of the values we hold together as a community. Read them one at a time, and for each of them, discuss the following questions:
- What do you find most compelling about this value?
- What do you find most challenging or even troubling?
- How do you see us currently living out this value collectively as a community?
- In what ways do we need to change to be more aligned with this value as a community?
- For you personally, how are you currently living this value?
- How do you need to personally align with it more?
3. After discussing, break up into smaller groups of 2 or 3 (or stay together as a larger group if that feels appropriate), and each share the one value about which you feel most challenged currently and why. Then, spend some time praying for one another.
Practice for the week: Living Our Values
This week, choose a different one of our values each day and intentionally try to embody it. In the morning, take a moment to quiet down and center yourself. Read the value slowly twice, inviting God’s presence to partner with you in living this value throughout your daily activities. Be conscious of the value (as well as God’s presence with you) as you go about your work, as you interact with people, as you engage online, as you rest and play. Be aware of your thoughts and emotions in all these interactions (whether voiced or expressed or not) and partner with God’s Spirit by letting go and aligning with the value.
Cedar Ridge Values
Love: This is our highest value and the one that undergirds all our others. Love is what we see in Jesus, the way we define God, and the way we seek to relate to others. As followers of Jesus our journey is ultimately a progressive experience of oneness with God and oneness with one another. For us, love is our final authority and more important than being right. We will disagree on all manner of things, but we will always love.
Hope: We celebrate the reality embodied in Jesus that God never gives up on the world or any single one of us. This hope drives our commitment to transformation. As followers of Jesus, we believe we can all become healthier and more loving people, and the world can become a more just and loving place. We choose to believe the best about others, ourselves, and the future, and we work creatively and imaginatively to bring about new realities and possibilities.
Diversity: We welcome and treasure our differences embodied in race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, culture, age and abilities and intentionally pursue a community culture where everyone has a sense of inclusion and belonging. We honor the different spiritual paths we have each walked and see our differences as a gift because we each have the most to learn from those who are least like us.
Humility: We adopt the servant-hearted posture of Jesus in putting others first. We are honest about our weaknesses and mistakes and authentically strive to change. We pursue vulnerability in relationships, and are committed to working through conflict, rather than walking away. While striving to act and speak with integrity, we seek new understandings of ourselves and others rather than proving ourselves right.
Justice: We seek to live justly and work for justice in our relationships, our communities, and in society as whole. We express this personally (being the change we want to see in world) through our behaviors, what we buy, what we consume, and how we treat both people and nature. We express this corporately through the struggle against systems that perpetuate racial, economic, social and environmental injustice.
Journey: We see life as a journey and all of us are in process. That means none of us are the finished article so we can have patience with ourselves and others. Transformation takes time, so we are committed to faithful practice and not giving up. We embrace mystery and acknowledge the role of both faith and doubt in our journey, recognizing that it takes us into both new understandings as well as new uncertainties. So we remain openhearted and openminded: to God and to one another.