Each year Good Shepherd’s Vestry engages in a spiritual study. We begin each Vestry meeting with 15-20 minutes of conversation about a spiritual topic in order to further develop as spiritual leaders.
This year’s study: Love Like Jesus
Vestry Study
2026
Good Shepherd has grown…
by leaps and bounds for the past couple of years. We are therefore poised to do one of two things. We can capitalize on our growth by going deeper in our relationships with God and each other in love. Or we can let the growth get away from us and diminish by losing our focus on what really matters: the Gospel and the people. In 2026 the staff and Vestry of Good Shepherd are going to take up an intentional focus on the Gospel and the people. In 2025, 118 people joined our church. Let’s make sure we know them and they know us, so that we can all engage in ministry together. We aim to be a big church that feels like a small church because we know, love, and care for each other so deeply.
The Gospel
The Vestry study this year will focus on the Gospel. We will take up an examination of how Jesus loved by studying scenes from the Gospels in which his love takes center stage. We are going to learn how to Love like Jesus. This will also be the theme of a study for the whole parish during the season of Lent.
How does it Work?
Each month a pair of study partners will meet with Father Hendree to study the Gospel texts listed below, then each set of study partners will take turns leading the whole vestry in the study that begins each vestry meeting.
Each month we will also learn the names of new church members at vestry meetings, so that we can be sure that the leaders of the church know and are connected with our new members. What a fun year it is going to be!
The love of Jesus is selfless and salvific
The love that pours from Jesus in word and deed is not attached to an outcome, it does not demand return, it does not want control. The love of Jesus gently rushes out in a completely self-emptying gesture of longing and affection. The love of Jesus seeks to make friends out of enemies, feed hungry bellies, comfort sorrowful hearts, excite eager minds, heal hurts, and calm all worries. Jesus’ love has no goal other than to spend itself on whoever and whatever is right in front of it. Jesus' love is the foundational building block of all creation; it is the ground or essential spark of your soul; and it is your deepest need and hunger. If we could Love like Jesus we could help the world heal from all the hurt, anger, and fear that seems to dominate our culture these days. The following passages from the Gospels will help us explore what it might be like to Love like Jesus.