Know Your Why

The Life Jar of Our Church – Know Your Why – Workshops

Know Your Why Workshops

Fri May 26 Know Your Church What 6-8p

Read about Pastor Lena’s take on the paradigm shift in churches: Come, Learn, Do.



Know Your Personal Why workbook with cover letter (9 pages): PDF with clickable links or fillable Word doc.

Know Your Church Why workbook (4 pages): PDF or fillable Word doc.

Know Your Church How workbook (2 pages): PDF or fillable Word doc.

Know Your Church What workbook (10 pages): PDF or fillable Word doc.


Church Life Jar - Know Your Why Workbook
Full Know Your Why – Church Life Jar workbook (27 pages): PDF or fillable Word doc.



Learn more about the Church Life Jar workbook

The first workshop was a personal development exercise that was open to the public. Anyone, cousins, spouses, friends, who wanted to explore their own Why was invited.

Many people do personal development exercises like this one at the beginning of the year, when they are making resolutions and setting goals for the coming year. Anyone can benefit from this process.

You may print the workbook and begin to work on it. You will find that if you make a first pass and then think about the questions for a little while you will get deeper answers. So it is recommended that you crack the workbook before attending a workshop.

If you are enjoying this process you may also wish to view our source workbooks, and there is also a wealth of information available with a quick Google search:
27 Questions to Ignite Your Spark from Live Your Legend http://liveyourlegend.net/email-updates/ (must subscribe)
Discovering Why from Whytelligence http://sourcesofinsight.com/discover-your-why/

Once you have established a personal Why you will develop a Why for the church, then a How, then a What. It is important for everyone to be involved in this process as much as possible.


The Life Jar of Our Church – Workshops


Know Your Why bullseye
At various times in the life-cycle of a church the question is raised, “What’s the Point?!” What’s the point of all the pebbles and sand we are using in our effort to fill the Life Jar of our church? And in so doing, are we becoming disillusioned, dissatisfied, and discontent, feeling that something is missing?

The theory of the Life Jar is simple. The Jar symbolizes your Life – what you put into it and what you leave out. Your inspiration, motivation, values, intentions, actions, and the resulting effects and outcomes are product suggested by rocks, stones/pebbles and sand. (See illustration at right)

Our tendency is to concentrate our energy in our actions and values (vis. stones), and/or our outcomes and results (sand) without the substance and foundation of inspiration and motivation (rocks), leading us to ask, “What’s the Point?” This same can be said for churches.

In order to give substance and foundation to your Life Jar, it is necessary to “Know Your Why.” When you know your “Why,” you can then intentionally choose what make up the rocks in your Life Jar. The collaboration of our personal findings as a church community will be the compass point for our church to identify our “Why.”

Two videos for your consideration

Simon Sinek’s TED Talk that explains “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” (including knowing your Why)

Michael Jr.’s “When you know your ‘why’ then your ‘what’ has more impact, because you’re working towards your purpose.”

We hope that this will be a time of inspiration, clarification and motivation as we unite together in setting the course of our church worship, ministries and missions for the years to come.