Hey y’all! This is Skyler Bauman, a senior at Virginia Tech and a member of this year’s Discernment Team. Last night, we had the great joy of kicking off our Discernment process! This process is one that is done yearly at Wesley and is filled with prayerful conversation in order to help us discern what next year’s vision and Core Ministry Team (CMT) will look like. In doing discernment, our community can be sure to find where God might be leading our ministry and how God is working alongside us to build up leaders.
Our team this year is very strong and I am excited to see how we will work together. The team is made up of freshman Evan Gross, sophomore Savannah Greene, junior Rosie Lyman, and seniors Kaelyn Knott, Andy Lowe, and me! We also have our Student Campus Minister Abigail Hickman and our Campus Minister Bret Gresham. As we talked about in our meeting last night, each one of us brings a unique perspective to this team that is crucial to how Wesley will grow in the coming year.
We made a covenant together and listed things that we all thought were crucial to functioning as a team. This covenant helps to provide us with how we will interact with each other both in meetings and outside of meetings. Some of the things on our covenant include…
Have fun
Empathy over judgement
Be vulnerable
Be fully present
These, among other things in our covenant, will help to keep us accountable to not only each other, but to God and how God is working through this process. By naming what we value as it pertains to team functioning, there will be a more seamless transition into how we trust each other, which is the basis of the entire team.
We also discussed some bible verses that help us see how God is working in this process. My personal favorite was Philippians 1: 9-11, which says that “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless….” This verse shows us that the Spirit of the Lord is truly with us while we go through discernment of our ministry. His love and knowledge will help guide us if we are only willing to listen. I know that through the spirit of prayer and vulnerability with one another, we will be able to see how God is trying to lead our ministry.
Overall, the team is very excited to continue to learn more about one another and see how God might be able to work through us. I am thrilled to be a part of this team for a second time because this process showed me, and continues to show me, just how unique and intentional Wesley’s ministry is. This intentionality and purposefulness takes us far in how, as Bret said, “team is built into our community’s DNA.” This spirit of team and working together helped us get through the COVID-19 Pandemic together as a community, and will continue to help us as we go through these next few months, whatever they may bring.
If you have any questions about the discernment process, or want to reach out to the team, our contact information will be provided below! We would love to hear from community members who want their vision and voices for the coming year heard.
All the best,
Skyler Bauman
Contact information…
Evan Gross: grossevan0@gmail.com
Savannah Greene: savannahpg19@vt.edu
Rosie Lyman: rlyman9@vt.edu
Kaelyn Knott: kaelynk9@vt.edu
Andy Lowe: andyl64@vt.edu
Skyler Bauman: skylerb@vt.edu
Abigail Hickman: abiga17@vt.edu
Bret Gresham: wesfound@vt.edu