[dropcap1]O[/dropcap1]ur new Conference Vision was presented and approved at the Alaska United Methodist Conference on June 5, 2010. This vision is offered to the individual churches to take, and to study, and to pray about. It is designed to be “OPEN”…recognizing that the mission of each individual church will reflect their individual settings. This is offered to our local churches and it is hoped that pastors and laypersons will begin discussing how this shapes their ministry today and into the future. The Visioning Team is committed to keep this mission before us and to work on resources to be used in the local church setting.

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Mission Statement:

The Mission of the United Methodist Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  Held and supported by the transforming relationship with God through Christ, we of the Alaska United Methodist Conference seek to be a community that creates a home for all peoples, finds our hope through grace and journeys together into God’s preferred future.

Five Top Priorities:

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Four Questions:

We have four questions to guide our discussions in our settings.  These are meant to focus us and force us all to ask the big questions about who we are, who are the people in our communities that aren’t being reached, and what kind of sacrifices are we willing to make as we discern where it is that God wants us to go.  Each church will come up with different answers here.

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Our Vision Theme:

This vision theme is for all of our churches to take back to their local settings. This theme gives us a time frame/benchmark of the year 2020.  So, we have nine years to be focusing on this in our local settings and nine years to be thinking ahead to where God is calling each of our churches in the years to come.  And we look at this, understanding that we are moving forward to a horizon…but that it’s God’s horizon.   We look at this, praying that God would, indeed, give us 20/20 Vision.

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