On Saturday November 19th, members of the Administrative Board, Deacons and staff met for an extended breakfast meeting to discuss a new way to look at our ministries and how they work towards our purpose of bringing people into a living relationship with Jesus Christ.
The Admin Board has embraced the theme of being an “Externally Focused and Internally Strong” church over the last few years (from the book The Externally Focused Quest, available in our church library) and this has now become a regular part of our ministry review discussions. Our next challenge is to take a look at our ministries to see how this theme is actually helping us achieve our purpose at Hope Fellowship.
Stan Baker shared at the Spring Membership Meeting a way of looking at our Christian lives through three words, Believe, Belong and Bless, which are outlined in Chapter 3 of this book. Believe represents our connection to Christ, Belong represents our connection to other Christians and Bless represents our connection to the community around us as we seek to minister to a broken world. The image of a triangular Celtic knot where each side connects to the others is used to help show these connections visually.
Jesus’ challenge in the Bible is to include all three of these connections in our lives each day. If we were to live by ourselves and spend all our time reading the Bible, without community or acts of mercy, we would be missing something. If we were to be part of a small group that only met for coffee, without studying the Bible or seeking ways to help our community, we would be missing something. If we were to mail cheques to a local church without stepping foot in the doors for worship or fellowship, we would be missing something. Even if we are able to make two of these connections, there would still be a gap since you can Belong and Bless through an organization like the Rotary Club without meeting Jesus’ challenge.
Getting familiar with how Christians live out these three connections leads us to the next step of realizing that they all can act as a way to connect someone back to the church and ultimately a living relationship with Jesus. A person can hear a sermon and be moved to learn more about belonging to a church and blessing others; a person can be invited to a church social event and be moved to learn more about Jesus and serving others; a person can participate in a church-sponsored service project and be moved to find out about Jesus and how to become a part of a group that serves in this way.
The challenge that we’ve taken on is to test each of our ministries to see which connection they are strengthening as they help people connect with Jesus, each other and the community. We’ve developed a simple questionnaire for our ministry leaders to rate each ministry to see if these three connections are present and how strong each one is. The Zone Coordinators and Admin Board will then use the results to guide our ministry planning. We will be taking some time to discuss this new ‘Scorecard’ approach at the Membership Meeting on Dec 1st and invite you to join us at 7:30 pm.
While we’re working on this new way of reviewing our ministries, we haven’t forgotten the valuable information that we’ve collected through the Natural Church Development survey. Hope Fellowship has participated in three surveys so far (1999, 2002 and 2007) and we are planning our next survey in the coming weeks. We have already started working on linking the survey questions to the Believe, Belong and Bless connections and look forward to using the results to help us connect closer to Jesus, closer to each other and closer to our community.
- Chris Ritskes
The Admin Board has embraced the theme of being an “Externally Focused and Internally Strong” church over the last few years (from the book The Externally Focused Quest, available in our church library) and this has now become a regular part of our ministry review discussions. Our next challenge is to take a look at our ministries to see how this theme is actually helping us achieve our purpose at Hope Fellowship.
Stan Baker shared at the Spring Membership Meeting a way of looking at our Christian lives through three words, Believe, Belong and Bless, which are outlined in Chapter 3 of this book. Believe represents our connection to Christ, Belong represents our connection to other Christians and Bless represents our connection to the community around us as we seek to minister to a broken world. The image of a triangular Celtic knot where each side connects to the others is used to help show these connections visually.
Jesus’ challenge in the Bible is to include all three of these connections in our lives each day. If we were to live by ourselves and spend all our time reading the Bible, without community or acts of mercy, we would be missing something. If we were to be part of a small group that only met for coffee, without studying the Bible or seeking ways to help our community, we would be missing something. If we were to mail cheques to a local church without stepping foot in the doors for worship or fellowship, we would be missing something. Even if we are able to make two of these connections, there would still be a gap since you can Belong and Bless through an organization like the Rotary Club without meeting Jesus’ challenge.
Getting familiar with how Christians live out these three connections leads us to the next step of realizing that they all can act as a way to connect someone back to the church and ultimately a living relationship with Jesus. A person can hear a sermon and be moved to learn more about belonging to a church and blessing others; a person can be invited to a church social event and be moved to learn more about Jesus and serving others; a person can participate in a church-sponsored service project and be moved to find out about Jesus and how to become a part of a group that serves in this way.
The challenge that we’ve taken on is to test each of our ministries to see which connection they are strengthening as they help people connect with Jesus, each other and the community. We’ve developed a simple questionnaire for our ministry leaders to rate each ministry to see if these three connections are present and how strong each one is. The Zone Coordinators and Admin Board will then use the results to guide our ministry planning. We will be taking some time to discuss this new ‘Scorecard’ approach at the Membership Meeting on Dec 1st and invite you to join us at 7:30 pm.
While we’re working on this new way of reviewing our ministries, we haven’t forgotten the valuable information that we’ve collected through the Natural Church Development survey. Hope Fellowship has participated in three surveys so far (1999, 2002 and 2007) and we are planning our next survey in the coming weeks. We have already started working on linking the survey questions to the Believe, Belong and Bless connections and look forward to using the results to help us connect closer to Jesus, closer to each other and closer to our community.
- Chris Ritskes
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