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Study Tour diary note #1 (New York)
Loving our community
On August 4 Dave, Frank, Chris, Todd and Wendy met with people from Redeemer Presbyterian Church’s Church Planting School, as well as Redeemer’s community service organisation, Hope for New York.
Hope for New York provides about 3300 volunteer places in various service organisations throughout the city. Hope for New York has not formed any specific service projects themselves: their ministry is providing volunteers to organisations that already exist. This also means that any skills or administration required by volunteers will be provided by the organisations the volunteers serve.
We loved this approach, and in many ways we felt it provided wonderful clarification for how we can serve our local community. Dave started developing some of this material last Sunday night, and will give us some more information coming Sunday morning.
Things to consider:
• what contexts could we develop that would allow RCRC people to serve our community?
• How could providing volunteers to community programs become an effective context for RCRC to develop true community based mission?
Church planting
The discussions we had with Mark Reynolds, Associate Director of Redeemer’s Church Planting Centre, were also very helpful. From the outset we were challenged to assess where most of our growth has been coming from. While we have seen people coming to faith in Christ, this has not been the strongest area of our growth. It’s good for us to consider what this might mean for our priorities and methods.
We also compared and contrasted various methods of church planting: taking a section of a congregation and transplanting them into a community; utilising a church planter and a small team to plant a new community in a neighbourhood; doing a ‘no nucleus’ plant: one or two people move into a community and start a church from scratch.
The third area of discussion had to do with the relative merits of using an individual church planter as compared with using a team. Reynolds’ advice was that teams can never be used as an excuse for not being able to find a church planter. This does not mean the planter is a ‘lone ranger’, but that the planter can best work effectively with a supportive team. Bottom line: there is no substitute for one person being identified as the plant leader. This provides the best context for accountability and responsible pursuit of the agreed vision.
Prayer Points
-• Seek the Lord’s guidance as to our need for a new elder (see above)
-• Matt le Grand is leaving for a placement in Scotland next week. Every blessing Matt! We trust God will surround you and bless you during your time away
-• Ask the Lord to work through Queenslanders to elect responsible Government on Sep 9th. Do what you can to be informed as to the issues that matter. God wants his people to have a political conscience (Rom 13:1-5; 1 Tim 2:1-4). Pray especially for responsible Christian candidates in the various parties.
-• Continue to prayer for relief for the drought. Warmer weather is coming, and that will place greater strain on water consumption.
-• Pray for increased peace in the middle east, pray that the plans of those who seek violence and destruction will be frustrated.