September 2012 - Towards a Renewed Vision

Towards a Renewed Vision

A group of around twenty parishioners met on Saturday 18 August 2012 to begin the process towards a new three to five year vision for the Parish.  We began by reflecting on the Diocesan Theme, then on the importance of having a vision and mission, and finally focused in a SWOT analysis on what we would like to preserve from the past and achieve in the future. This process also included looking at what we need to stop doing, and things we’d like to avoid happening. This process is not yet 100% complete as the Youth are doing the same exercise during their Sunday Teen Church time.

So far we have discovered the following:

In terms of the Diocesan Vision, “Renewed and Empowered through Baptism to be “Servants of God and Stewards of the Mysteries of Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:1) we need to BE disciples of Christ and shift from religion to Faith, which implies an increase in our commitment, discipline and willingness to follow Christ in living out and exercising our Faith. We need to be equipped and willing to equip others as we seek to be qualified Ambassadors for God. We need to GO and live our Faith in our everyday lives amongst whoever we meet, and our words and actions need to identify us as disciples and point to Christ. We need to seek spiritual growth so that we can reach out both into the Parish and into the community, acknowledging that we are “sent” Sunday by Sunday to wherever there is need and opportunity. What we are called to DO is make disciples through being role-models, willing to take risks and to stand up and be counted. We need to serve and represent Christ by being salt (preserve, clean, flavour), light (guide, dispel darkness) and yeast (transform, bring to fullness) as we seek to build dedicated, committed and sustainable discipleship. We need to be a community of committed, caring disciples who offer ourselves to participate in growing a community of disciples that is sustaining and sustainable.

In terms of the SWOT analysis we wish to PRESERVE our leadership and management structures, continue to cherish our diversity, our particular Anglican traditions including the variety of worship opportunities offered (i.e. the quieter 7am Eucharist, and the more noisy 9am Eucharist). Also the family ethos of the Parish, our Sunday School, Teen Church, Confirmation and other programmes. We also wish to continue caring for our facilities (buildings and garden). We wish to ACHIEVE a wide participation in a shared vision for the Parish. This includes a renewed focus on education through workshops and relevant courses (e.g. Lent),   the retention of youth (beyond Confirmation/Matric) by utilising focused Youth programmes (there are a number developed beyond the Church), a strong sense of community across age-groups and building relationships through fellowship (encourage wider participation and involvement), exploiting Social Media as a method of communication and marketing. We also wish to find better ways to utilise our space, and look to plant a new congregation to our South-East. There are things we need to ELIMINATE such as ignorance of our vision and what it is to be Christian and Anglican, a lack of involvement, complacency and apathy among the members, including the disrespect and lack of courtesy shown by those who arrive late for services and functions, also a desire to be comfortable and not take risks. We wish to AVOID such things as radical change, destructive confrontation and criticism, exclusivity and intolerance, and procrastination. We’d like to also avoid increasing the size of our Church building, and we don’t wish to lose any Church members.

We realise everyone was not able to be present, but may have things to add that are important to you about our community. Please feel free to chat with the Clergy, the Wardens or members of Council. Once we have received input from our young people, the next step will be to formulate the above into vision, mission and priority statements. It is our intention to have these finalised in time for our Annual Vestry meeting in January 2013.

Blessings

Mark

August 2012 - New Vision

Dear Friends

A new Vision

Please join us on Saturday 18 August 2012 from 08:30 to 13:00 in the Parish Hall to reflect on Corpus Christi’s direction for the next three to five years. This workshop will begin a process that will then go to Parish Council, back to the Parish as a whole for comment, and finally be formally accepted at Annual Vestry in January 2013. It is vitally important that you give your input “from the pew” at the beginning of the process as it will guide our Parish life over the next few years. Please make every effort to join us!

In 2006 we developed a “Statement of Purpose” that acted as a powerful tool for a number of years at Parish Council level. Over the last two years we have been increasingly aware at this level that our Statement no longer drives us, and needs review. The Diocese has asked us to reflect on the Diocesan Theme, and review our Parish vision as part of this process.

Our present statement reads as follows: Corpus Christi is a Christ-centred, traditional Anglican community guided by the Holy Spirit. We offer inclusive, flexible, relevant and dignified worship opportunities. Our mission is building the Kingdom of God in the wider community through outreach and service. We focus on our lives being a place where others meet Christ, offering opportunities through our Christian community for spiritual and relational growth, care, fellowship and ministry development. We value friendship, youth participation, and broad-based parishioner involvement. At its heart are the words “We focus on our lives being a place where others meet Christ.”

In seeking to create a “New Vision”, we are not saying that our previously stated core purpose and values are no longer important. Rather, we are reflecting on the need to take into account the transformation (irreversible change) that this sense of purpose and value has brought about as we have sought to live out the mission and vision we identified in 2006. We are asking the question, “What is the next step in our transformative journey with Christ as we seek to be effective for the Kingdom in the context of Garsfontein and the wider communities we serve?” As Christians our purpose (mission) is discovered in Scripture; our vision is discovered in our context. As Anglicans our context is not just the suburb and its surrounds in which we worship and live, but also our Archdeaconry (Pretoria East) and Diocese (Pretoria), as well as the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. Our context is complex.

Our Diocesan Theme (agreed to at Diocesan Synod in 2011) is Renewed and empowered to be “servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Corinthians 4:1). On 18 August 2012 we will take some time to reflect on what this actually means for us, and what it says about who God is calling us to BE, where God is calling us to GO, and what GOD is calling us to DO. We will ask the question, “What will our Parish community look like if we are renewed and empowered?”  and we will seek to revise our Statement of Purpose accordingly. This Theme seeks to move us from programmes to processes, from decisions to disciples and from services to service. It asks us to reflect not simply on how many people come to our Church services, but how many people our Church serves; not simply how many people attend our ministry, but how many people have we equipped for ministry; not simply how many people minister inside the Church, but how many minister outside the Church; not simply helping people become more whole in themselves, but helping people bring more wholeness to their world; not only how many people we bring into the community of faith, but also how many people we help experience healthy community; not simply counting the resources that God gives us to steward, but counting how many good stewards we are developing for the sake of the world; not simply how effective we are with our mission, but how faithful we are to God; not simply how much we immerse ourselves in Scripture, but how faithfully we live in the story of God.

Our Parish is a bit like a car: imagine a driver, front-seat passenger and back-seat passengers. What would you like to be driving our Parish car? Management? Programmes? Relationships? Vision? Which of these is taking up most of our time and energy in the Parish? What are we most concerned about? – that is the one that is driving our Parish!!  If we have out-grown our vision, it is possibly sitting in the back-seat, most likely with relationships, and management has managed to get behind the steering wheel with some support from programmes. This means the car (Parish) is in good shape, is well maintained, polished and resourced, but rather aimless, its journey a bit like that old fashioned “Sunday afternoon Drive” with no particular destination in mind, the journey being a pleasant end in itself. Now imagine the car (Parish) with vision behind the steering wheel and with relationships in the front passenger seat, with management and programmes giving support from the back. A more focused journey? A sense of direction? A sense of purpose?

What is the difference between vision and mission? Our mission (purpose) is what we do best every day, and our vision is what the future looks like because we do our mission so exceedingly well. Vision is really important as it energises us to be about our mission. The following questions help us evaluate our vision: does it create excitement about the future? Does it build a powerful image of what our Parish can look like over the next three to five years? Does it build on our history, our strengths and on our unique characteristics? Does it inspire people to act? Is it resulting in focused forward movement in the Parish? Does our vision statement represent a dream that is beyond what we think is possible without God, or is it too small? When is/was its “sell by date”? In thinking about our vision for the next three to five years, we also need to reflect on what are the things we have in place that we want to keep? And what are some of the new things we need to do or achieve? What are some of the things we are currently doing that we need to stop doing? And is there anything we wish to avoid happening? We also need to identify some specific targets (no less than one and no more than three) in relation to our vision in order to energise our mission.

The above is what we are hoping to begin achieving on Saturday 18 August 2012. If it has awakened a spark of interest in you, I really do hope you will be able to find the time to join us for the morning. In preparation, please take time to reflect on the many questions raised above.

Blessings

Mark

November 2011 - Servants and Stewards

Dear Friends

Vision

I reminded us in my article last month that the vision of the Anglican community in Southern Africa is to be “Anchored in the love of Christ, Committed to God's Mission, Transformed by the Holy Spirit.” The full vision, mission and priority statements can be found at http://bit.ly/sI5Mrw , and I do recommend you take time to read them. Bishop Jo, at our recent Synod, indicated that in 2012 there will be a process of revisiting our Diocesan statements in order to align them with the Provincial commitment, as well as to the context in which our Diocese finds itself, namely that we now have a rector in every parish in the Diocese, allowing every parish to become increasingly a centre of spirituality, mission and ministry.

Diocesan Theme 2011-2014

The Diocese meets for Synod every three years, and each time sets a theme for the three years to follow. The theme is designed to help us reach aspects of our Diocesan Vision and Mission, and to give us a focus for development and growth between Synod meetings. Synod 2011 accepted the theme:

Renewed and empowered through Baptism to be “servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Corinthians 4:1)

I believe this theme will usefully help us redefine the focus of our Diocesan Vision and Mission as we seek to explore, in terms of the present Diocesan Mission statement, what it truly means for Parishes to be forming centres of spirituality, mission and ministry. In addressing this theme in his Charge to Synod, Bishop Jo reflects that we need to move our focus from the Church as a building to the Church as community. We need to spend time teaching and reflecting on what it means to be Christian Community, on what it means to be servants and stewards in the realm and domain of God.

One of the keys to building community that Bishop Jo points to in his Charge is the importance of establishing small faith communities in people’s homes. So much of community in the Anglican environment is established around our building and our Sunday worship, and so there is a huge challenge here. It has been touching in recent weeks to experience how the Corpus Christi Family Cross is taking the focus of community into our homes – drawing together the family, drawing in friends – as we meet to pray. It has been encouraging to experience something of the supportive and faith-filled friendships that uphold many of our parish families.

Our responsibility, however, is not just to ourselves, and not just to building our own community; we have a responsibility to the wider community of humanity and creation. The faith community forms our foundation, but we are called to build beyond our faith boundaries. Bishop Jo reminds us of this in his Charge when he says, “we must, as a matter of our confession, live a life reflecting God’s love which demands unity and requires justice for all humanity.” A strong aspect of this journey is being willing to reach beyond our own boundaries and to join hands with people of other denominational, and even religious, outlook. Unity can never exist if we are unwilling to embrace diversity. We also need to embrace our struggles, suffering and hurt, the fragmentation of human life and community. We are reliably informed that by the time you read this the global human population will have reached seven billion. What is the implication of such numbers for survival? What is the implication for our world? What does it mean for our faith?

The challenge is to live differently and meaningfully, to build community that rejects isolation and breeds wholeness, creating a secure future for our world. Bishop Jo’s challenge to us in this regard is that, “Our work for the kingdom of God must create an environment that has the character of heaven on earth.”

Blessings

Mark