(Un)Surprisingly Effective

(from now on, every blog post will have a picture of an Effective Structure)

I'm chuffed. This is deeply, satisfyingly wonderful.

One of the privileges of being involved in NCD, and particularly NCD at Toronto, is getting a first-hand, front-seat view of God at work. (Now don't tell anyone else... they will think we are big-noting ourselves, because Toronto seems to be one of God's favourite places, He turns up every time we get together, He seems to love Toronto folk)

On Monday night, at Cameron Johnston's Stress Seminar I saw Toronto church members in action. It wasn't until tonight that I realised what was happening.

Remember that our mission statement is...to represent Christ to all members of our community. And remember my questions from several weeks ago...

1. What does "represent Christ" mean?


2. What do we have to DO to "represent Christ"?


3. What do we have to BE to "represent Christ"?


4. And lastly, how successful are we at representing Christ right now?

One of the jobs I set for myself on Monday night was to talk to every attendee from "our community". It turned out that four women came from our community. During the break I tried to chat with them, but some member beat me to every single one. Then after the program the same thing happened. So I didn't even talk to one visitor!

So to answer those questions:

We represent Christ when we are friendly to people from our community.

I believe that you already "represent Christ". That's what I saw on Monday night and at all the other functions at Toronto... people being friendly. It seems almost natural, but there are lots of places where this isn't so. God has made His people at Toronto supernaturally friendly. It is part of our luncheons, in our Sabbath School, at Project G... all over the place.

So to answer that last question: I believe that you are already successful at representing Christ right now... Surprisingly effective actually. Well maybe I shouldn't be surprised, after all God has been at work here, with just as much power and grace as He is in overseas missions, big evangelistic campaigns, radical church plants and ADRA projects.

Jesus lives at Toronto because you are here... and I'm chuffed.

Structures To Reach "Our Community"

(from now on, every blog post will have a picture of an Effective Structure)

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

Last time I asked you what it means to "represent Christ", today I'm going to move on to the meaning of "our community".

Our first Core Value define our community as "every person living between Rathmines and Fennell Bay", which sounds about right to me.

For a few moments, think about the people you know in this area. Try to imagine each one and what exactly you "represent" to them. When they think of you, how do they feel? What do they think about your religion, your church, your Jesus?

Still on "our community"...Do the people you know here have needs? What are they? What are you doing to help meet those needs? A major part of Jesus' ministry was meeting people's needs, if we are to "represent" Him, as in our vision statement, we will act like He did.

Another aspect... Do you know many people in the area? If you don't know many, how are you going to meet some more? What can you do that will bring you in touch with them? Once again Jesus is our lead here when he mingled with people to get to know them.

Toronto church has thought of a simple way to help you meet local people and meet their needs. As you have noticed, there is a Stress Seminar coming up followed by a Depression Recovery Program. We have a Creative Vegetarian Cooking and a Daniel prophecy seminar in the pipeline as well. The youth are planning another Project G.

These are not just a jumble of programs put on by the church. They are opportunities for you to invite people, especially people from Rathmines to Fennell Bay, along to the program that best meets their need. They are the vanguard of the "Effective Structure" we are trying to build into Toronto church.

Your part in the process of "reaching every person" in our community is simple...
1. Invite the most stressed person you know, to come along with you to "Cooling Down the Stress Soup" on May 30. Or invite someone you know who has depression to an orientation night for the Depression Recovery Program on June 6 or 14.
2. If you don't know anyone who is depressed or stressed bring your Toronto friends and come anyway.
3. If you don't have any friends (depressed, stressed or otherwise) from the Toronto area, come along on these nights to meet some of the people in "our community" and get to know them better.

Give it a go. You might enjoy it, I am.

To Represent Christ?

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

1. What does "represent Christ" mean?


2. What do we have to DO to "represent Christ"?


3. What do we have to BE to "represent Christ"?


4. And lastly, how successful are we at representing Christ right now? Are you happy with how the church represents Christ? Are you happy with how you represent Christ?

I'd really like you to think about these questions. If this vision statement is going to inspire and give direction to our church, we need to know what it means.

Sorry, I'm not going to give you my attempts at answering those questions until next week. Think about them in the meantime. That's hard work, I know. Pray about them. Talk to me about them. Talk to each other.

Representing Christ is the centre of what we say we are here for. Doing a good job at this determines whether we win or lose.

I'd love your thoughts.

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)

Red Sea Worship

This Australia Day morning, I read the beginnings of another nation, Israel, at the Red Sea. It's found in Exodus 14-16
The part I liked was in chapter 15: (NLT)

1 Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord:

"I will sing to the Lord,

for he has triumphed gloriously;

he has hurled both horse and rider
into the sea.

2 The Lord is my strength and my song;

he has given me victory.

This is my God, and I will praise him -

my father's God, and I will exalt him!

3 The Lord is a warrior;

Yahweh is his name!..."

and later...

20 Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron's sister, took a tambourine and led all the women as they played their tambourines and danced. 21 And Miriam sang this song:

"Sing to the Lord,

for he has triumphed gloriously;

he has hurled both horse and rider

into the sea."

These people knew how to worship! And they had good reason to worship as well.

But what about you? What areas of your life have you seen God at work in? What have you got to sing and dance about?

In her excellent book, Silent Savior: Daring to Believe He's Still There, A.J. Gregory quotes Frederick Buechner's wisdom... Asked what he'd say to someone searching for God, he responds: 'Pay attention. Listen to your life, and what's going on around you.' And above all this: 'What brings tears to your eyes?'

What brings tears to your eyes? Are you paying attention? We have lots to worship God for.