Riverfest Reflections

Mike Valentine, one of our small group leaders and worship team guitarist graciously agreed to share his reflections from the Riverfest Weekend:

It has become very apparent to me over this past year that although I have done a good job of establishing professional goals and have an excellent review process in place to track my progress against those goals I have not been as diligent or deliberate at doing the same for my personal life.  My last ICE trip to Peru started me examining what was the higher calling on my life and this past weekend brought that down even more to ground level.

During the exercise on Saturday morning about thinking through our own memorial service it occurred to me that although I had generally thought that I wanted my life to be more about influence than affluence, I am not sure that I took the time to understand what that really looks like day in and day out.  I certainly could not articulate it clearly so therefore it was no longer a part of my daily life.  Trying to put details as to what people would say about my life made it clear that I was too comfortable with generalities and had not spent enough time on the specifics of how I can live this out each day.  Going to Peru and working on social justice issues with Paz y Esperanza is actually easier for me than focusing on those I see everyday.  The needs in Peru are clear and easy to get my hands around but what about the people I rub shoulders with regularly?  Am I really having an impact there?

We’ve spent the last year in Small Group talking about the Kingdom of God and what that really means.  One question that we keep wrestling with is how each one of us fits into the bigger picture.  Again it’s pretty easy to say that going to Peru and working throughout the year on the next ICE trip is doing Kingdom work, but what about here at home and my daily activities?

The result is that I have committed to creating a long term vision for my life and from that vision create a mission statement that will guide my daily decisions and activities.  I plan on using the notes from this past weekend and finally reading the book Visioneering (another worthy goal that did not get accomplished).  A statement early in the book really hit me; “Everybody ends up somewhere in life.  A few people end up somewhere on purpose.”