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This is the second of my
reflections on Tom Bandy's recent visit to Australia in this reflection
I ask the question of "how do we resouce mission?" One of the interesting things that Tom Bandy spoke about on his recent visit is how to support and resource people and groups in the congregation to do mission. I’ll refer back to his visioning process a little later in another reflection, however very simply put the process was: - Set Common Values - Set Common Beliefs - Set Executive Limitations He’d go on to say that when someone comes up to him with a “call” to enter into ministry with a particular group of people who they feel called to serve the Minister had a few tasks to perform. a) The first task is to make sure that this has come from the ground up as a result of their “heart burst” (or sense of call) and spiritual growth. b) The second task was to align the ministry idea with the common values. c) The third task was to align the ministry with the common belief. d) The fourth task was to consider if the ministry would exceed the executive limitations. e) The fifth task was to ask if the person had about 3 others who have a similar calling or “heart burst” if they didn’t the Minister would ask that they find the people who feel a similar calling to this ministry. f) When the person returned with a group of people with a similar “heart burst” the Minister would have to go through a – d again And this is when the process became really interesting… Tom would then say that if all of these steps are ok, if the mission does sit alongside the values and beliefs and there is a group of people (he would call this group a cell group) who are called to this ministry then the Church would HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO RESOURCE THE MISSION AND THE PEOPLE. I was interested particularly in the use of the words HAVE NO CHOICE in this context. What does this mean for the way in which we as Churches, Presbyteries and Synods resource mission? Firstly I think this brings into question our process of applications. Secondly I believe this brings into question the process of having to sell your idea to the funding bodies. Thirdly I think this might offer us a different model to resource our mission. I hear from some people in the UCA and other churches the pain and frustration in regards to getting funding from different bodies, especially for groups that are trying something completely new. In the UK now for example there is a church community called Moot who are struggling to find funding to continue to be a different model of church in the UK. In Australia I hear stories of young people and churches trying to get something off the ground from scratch because of a calling to minister to a community only to loose out on funding over congregations performing what could be seen as a self-serving mission. And in some places there are congregation plants who are desperately seeking a space to worship who have to jump through hoops in order to get more support to move forward. My question to our Churches, Presbyteries and Synods are: - Do we have a set of Core Values? - Do we have a set of Core Beliefs? - Do we have some set Executive Limitations? If we do and we were to take some of Tom Bandy’s processes to heart we might need to re-think our resourcing of missional activities. If instead of thinking “what mission activities should we fund?” or “what hoops should we get this group to jump through” we could be comparing the ideas alongside these values, beliefs and limitations. If we were to do that and we saw that these missional callings did sit alongside these ideas we would HAVE NO CHOICE but to resource them. This might also lead to some projects actually not being funded because they do not sit alongside these things, or because they are serving, or because they are because of a whim, not because of a group of people really having a “heart burst” or call to minister in this way in the community. Perhaps people with a passion would get funding over people with political clout or the support of people who know how to write great applications. If we’re to take Bandy’s process seriously the idea of HAVE NO CHOICE would have to rise up in our churches, in our Committees, in our Presbyteries, in our Synods and in our Assembly. I wonder how we’d cope with that, I seriously wonder how we’d cope with that. -- Darren Wright Fool Youth and Family Worker UCA NSW Synod Presbytery of Canberra Region GPO Box 221. Canberra. ACT. 2601. [EMAIL PROTECTED] 02 6248 9311 (office) "The Gospel must be constantly forwarded to a new address, because the recipient is repeatedly changing place of residence." - Helmut Thielicke------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------ |
