Ministers Desk 26th May

On 24 March we held our congregation’s Annual General Meeting.  At this meeting we received reports from the Church Council team leaders and spent time in small groups discussing some aspects of these reports.  At its meeting on Monday 20 May the Church Council reviewed the feedback that was provided by the small groups.  We appreciated the useful insights that were shared about the activities of the congregation.  Team leaders have already and will continue to work on the areas that were shared.  I’d like to discuss a few of them here. 

 

Pastoral Care – in recent weeks the Pastoral Care team have written about how they are responding to the feedback.  For many years now we have had a consistent model of pastoral care, but we are aware that some people may still not fully understand how this system works.  We will seek to find other ways to communicate the way the system operates.

 

Worship – each of our worship services are led by people who are gifted and called to this ministry.  We thank and appreciate those who lead through music, bible reading, prayer, drama and preaching.  It was expressed that it would be good to have more people participating in leadership of the 9:30 service.  The worship teams have been actively seeking to involve more people this year.  However, we recognise that the area in which we desperately need more people involved is in the leadership of Kidzone and the Sunday Morning Youth Explore Group.  For the sake of our youngest disciples we need creative, passionate and called leaders for this group.  If God is calling you to this ministry, please speak to Harlee or myself.

 

Time and Priorities – through the responses to a number of groups the issue of lack of time to participate in church activities was noted.  The busyness and competing demands that many of us face is a growing and real pressure.  With the increasingly frantic pace that some people are living their lives, the way we do church is naturally going to have to change.  Some responses that would be worthwhile addressing include:

·         Our relationship with God should be our top priority. The first commandment is “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:3).

·         The value we see in something determines in a large degree the priority that we will give to something.

·         Faith should be the mortar that binds our life together, not a separate aspect of life.

·         Our faith transforms the way we allocate time and give ourselves to the service of other people. 

·         A healthy spiritual life is lived primarily away from the gathered congregation where we can be salt and light.

·         Our purpose as a church is not to get more people to do more things, but to allow the Spirit to grow us evermore like Jesus Christ with his love and compassion for all people.

 

Thank you to those who participated in the small groups.  In the coming weeks I’ll write more about this.

 

Grace and peace

David Fender