Our Vision Statement

Effective Structures require that "we know what we're building" (to quote Scott Thompson at the NCD presentation on April 9). That's another way of saying that we need to have a vision.

I had forgotten we had a Vision Statement for our church. Maybe you had too. So here it is. The statement was made in May 2005. You will be hearing a lot more about this.

Vision Statement

The Vision Statement of the Toronto Seventh-day Adventist Church is to represent Christ to all members of our community.

The Mission Statement of the Toronto Seventh-day Adventist Church is to be a community of committed members, who will foster spiritual growth in a vibrant Church, embracing all age groups.

Core Values

1. Reach every person living between Rathmines and Fennell Bay with the good news about Jesus.
2. Promote passionate spirituality through prayer and Bible study.
3. All members to be involved in small group ministry.
4. Preachers to be relevant to all age groups.
5. Demonstrate honesty in beliefs and opinions.
6. Encourage each person to recognise and develop his/her Spiritual Gifts.
7. Recognise and nurture our youth to take an active part in the mission of the Church.

Some questions:
Do you like this vision?
Can you see where you fit in the vision?
Does it help you set priorities?
Does it provide guidelines for making decisions?
Is it exciting and motivating?
Have we left anything out?
Should we delete anything?

First Steps

Now that we know our Minimum Factors (Effective Structures and Empowering Leadership) what are we going to do about them?

We have decided to start by:

1. Emphasising that we are all ministers
2. Helping you find your ministry
3. Supporting you in your ministry

We are all Ministers

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 1 Peter 2:9

If you are a member of Toronto church then you are a Minister, a priest of God. You have been called out of darkness to proclaim the excellence of Christ.

Finding your Ministry

We plan to run several "Find your Spiritual Gifts" Sabbath afternoons, but this is only the beginning of your finding your ministry.

To truly find the SHAPE of your ministry you need to know your:

• Spiritual Gifts
• Heart
• Abilities
• Personality
• Experience

This will take longer than one Sabbath afternoon so we propose that once you find your Spiritual Gifts you will meet in small groups during the week for about four weeks to determine your SHAPE and have a clear idea of why God chose to give you to Toronto and what sort of ministry you should be doing.

If you want to continue to meet in small groups, that is wonderful. We would love to have more 'holistic' small groups.

Supporting you in your Ministry

We will do this by Coaching and Small Groups. Where will all the needed Coaches and Small Group Leaders come from?

From the results of the SHAPE-finding small groups we will invite people whose ministries and gifts indicate they would be good Coaches or Group Leaders to training for these tasks.

The youth have already done basic Group Leader training in just 4 hours. There is similar Coaching training available.

What is coaching? Put simply, "Helping people succeed".

Coaching is achieved by:

• Finding out what God wants you to do,
• Helping you do it

A coach will help you succeed in your ministry by:

• Helping you refine your goals. Set your focus
• Helping you set priorities and take action, Keep your focus
• Helping to anticipate and overcome problems. Refine the focus
• Providing support and encouragement
• Helping you evaluate and celebrate progress
• Helping you revise your plans when needed.

2011 Survey Results

Summary of Toronto SDA church's progress and life (January 2011)

	Our Maximum Factors	Our Minimum Factors
Overall Tendency	Faith	Service
Health Characteristics	Need-oriented Evangelism	Effective Structures, Empowering Leadership
Themes	reconciliation prayer welcoming	intimacy vision learning (discipling)

Explanation:

Our Overall Tendency (in terms of Fellowship, Service and Faith, the 3 main domains of church life) is towards Faith rather than Service, with Fellowship in between. This means that we enjoy our own experience with God in prayer, Bible and worship. We are introverted and keep our experience of the living God to ourselves. We don't share it much within fellowship and rarely share it evangelistically outside the church.
Our Maximum Health Characteristic, like most SDA churches, is Need-oriented Evangelism. Our evangelism meets people's needs. This is good.

Our Minimum Health Characteristics are Effective Structures and Empowering Leadership. This means that leaders at Toronto are not so good at:

• Explaining our goals
• Concern for member's experience and journey with Jesus
• Strengthening fellowship
• Training and equipping members for service and ministry
• Helping people find their ministry
• Encouraging people in their service and ministry
• Supporting and collaborating with members as they carry out their ministry to the Toronto community

To summarise our Health Characteristics:

• Our structures are less effective at supporting the members' ministries
• We are no better at empowering members for ministry

However, this is not all bad! It presents a tremendous challenge because these are just the area where:

• The SDA church in NNSW is weakest - so needs the most help
• The area where the Holy Spirit is working most strongly, TODAY
• We have the tools (through Ellen White's writings) to meet this challenge
• We have the power (through Jesus' presence) to meet this challenge
• We have the people (our members) to meet this challenge
• The Themes tell us what comes naturally to Toronto church, and what doesn't.
  

We are naturally:

Reconciling

we don't have many disagreements and when we do we resolve them quickly. We trust our Bible and each other.

Prayerful

usually by ourselves

Welcoming

to new people

We are NOT naturally good at:

Intimacy

sharing our experiences within church or finding support from the church to get through our personal problems

Vision

goals are unclear. As individuals, as leaders and as a church we seem to be drifting comfortably along.

Learning

we aren't being trained for our present church duties or led to find what God wants us to do. The church is not encouraging spiritual growth or discipleship.

Other good things compared to last survey (not in the table above):

• Our church growth in health and numbers is much more sustainable.
• We are as healthy as an average Australian church.
• We are much more healthy than we were 3 years ago
• Our church services are more inspiring
• Our relationships are more loving

Thus ends our Summary of Survey Results - 2011.

Some definitions:

Natural Church Development

a long-term strategic process to progressively improve the health of our church, with the most effective use of our limited time, energy and resources.

NCD Survey

of 30 involved church members that gives an accurate, up-to-date snapshot of our church's health by revealing trends, deep issues and a clear overview of the church. The survey measures the quality characteristics.

Quality Characteristics

the 8 critical characteristics found in every healthy, growing church:

Empowering Leadership - are the leaders focused on equipping believers for ministry?

Gift-based Ministry - are tasks distributed according to gifting?

Passionate Spirituality - Is the spiritual life of members characterised by passion?

Effective (Functional) Structures - Do the various structures support church growth?

Inspiring Worship Services - Is worship service helping us experience God?

Holistic Small Groups - Do small groups address the life issues of members?

Need-oriented Evangelism - Are evangelistic activities related to actual needs?

Loving Relationships - Are relationships in the church Christ-like?

The adjective is the vital ingredient, not the noun. The NCD survey measures the adjective, so, for example, it looks at how well leaders "empower" members, not at their leadership skills.
Measured by points standardised by country (our score is compared to all other Australian churches of all denominations).
It is possible to score less than 0 and greater than 100.

Empowering Leadership

1. Explains what needs to be done
   
2. Motivates people to find the role Jesus wants them to fulfill in His body.
3. Liberates people to fulfill that role

Effective Structures:

1. Help people Experience Jesus
2. Strengthen Fellowship of believers
3. Support members as they Minister to their church and community

NCD Average

the average of the point score of all the Quality Characteristics. The 'average church' has an NCD average of 50 points. (Ours is 48.6. It was 48.7 in 2010 and 31.9 in 2008)

Minimum Factor

the lowest (ie. the weakest, least developed) Quality Characteristics. (Ours are Empowering Leadership and Effective Structures. Last year was Inspiring Worship Service and Empowering Leadership in 2008).
It shows where the church:

• Cannot see Christ clearly
• Is blocking the Holy Spirit
• Needs help

NCD Strategy

Improve church health by focusing on improving the Minimum Factor. This:

• Maximises potential growth
• Uses energy and resources most effectively
• Liberates leaders by simplifying what they need to do for growth
• Gives solid input into developing values and vision.

Min-Max difference

the difference between the highest and lowest point score. Less than 15 is good, 15-30 is concerning. A lower differences mean that growth in health and numbers is more sustainable. (Ours is 11, down from 17 in 2010 and 18 in 2008)