« Drought Alert | Home | OASIS 4 Kids »
A Kingdom Strategy
By Alisoun | August 2, 2008
Every once in a while I encounter someone who reacts against the idea of the church trying to think strategically about what it does, with the unspoken implication that strategy is sort of worldly and “unspiritual”. The argument is often something along the lines that all we need to do is pray and the sovereign God will get done what He wants done.
While it is true that God is sovereign and that no kingdom work gets done unless He wills and empowers it, it does not follow that we do not need to think strategically about ministry in this church. Observation of the ministries of both Jesus and the Apostle Paul underlines this point. Jesus was clearly strategic in both what He did (preaching rather than healing – Mark 2:35-39) and in the timing of what He did (John 11:6). Paul also used strategic thinking in determining his actions, spending most time with the Ephesian and Corinthian churches out of all the churches he founded (e.g. Acts 19:10). This was because those places were major trade and communication centres for the Roman Empire, and people converted in these cities would take the gospel to the far-flung corners of the empire. Strategic thinking is not “unspiritual”, on the contrary we have biblical models to inspire us to develop strategies for the extension, by His garce, of God’s Kingdom.
It is for such strategic reasons that we place so much emphasis on youth and children’s ministry in this church, areas of ministry that have grown significantly in recent years. Importantly, it is also true that of those people who become Christians, about 75% of them do so before their twenties. it is clearly in their younger years that people are more open to the gospel, and so it makes good strategic sense for us to concentrate our resources here.
Coupled with this is the fact that God seems to be encouraging us to focus in this young persons’ area by opening doors for us. Neither of the two high school ministries we have commenced in the last twelve months (Woonona and Keira high schools) were at our initiation. In the case of Woonona it was the, then, Bishop of Wollongong who asked if we could establish some ministry in this area, and in the case of Keira the initiative came from the school itself.
It is for this reason that in the last few months we have been developing an overall strategy to take Christ not only to the children in the community but to their families as well.
A brief outline of the strategy is as follows:
- Primary Schools - To continue to teach SRE
- High Schools – Develop current SRE and lunch-time group Ministries, and add other schools. Link these to our youth church, One Way Ticket. Start youth churches in other high schools.
- Families – Run “family type” courses in schools, both primary and secondary in order to build relationships.
In this overall community outreach strategy we are working with, and have the support of the resources of Anglican Youthworks.
This is a very exciting project that has the potential to become large scale, and to be highly effective for the proclamation of Christ into the non-church community. This, what is in effect a community outreach project, could actually involve a staff person (or more) being fully employed in this area of ministry alone.
This is a challenging vision but seems to be one God is encouraging us to pursue, and I would ask every member to get behind it in every way possible. What ways are there?
a) To pray for all our youth and children’s ministries, both existing and proposed, because the greatest strategy will fail unless God is behind it.
b) To be involved. If we are to increase school related ministries as envisaged above then this requires more people to be involved – teachers, group leaders and people for youth church ministry.
c) To give. This vision will require a greater staff resource than even the current staff structure (even if it was filled). It is thus a vision requireing significant finance. Contributions, both ongoing and one-offs, including Thank Offerings on the first of June, to our Tax deductible Schools Ministry fund will be highly strategic gifts, and contribute greatly to the achievement of this vision.
We seem to be presented with a great kingdom building opportunity, one we must take for God’s glory.
In Christ,
Martin J. Bragger,
Senior Minister.
Topics: Comment | Comments Off
Comments are closed.