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What does it mean to minister to our neighbourhood? |
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People make up their minds about our congregation if the first six minutes.
Not long is it, considering that the six minutes includes any encounters they make between parking the car and walking in the door!
Hear Rev Rob Stoner's wisdom on connecting to our neighbourhood through one (or more) mission activities through which congregation members are in relationship to those beyond the church in ways that give expression to the presence of the reign of God and through providing those qualities and activities which people are looking for when they come to us. |
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Resourcing Public Ministry |
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Using the premise that public ministry is a way of speaking about local mission, in a presentation to the Urban Mission Network Rob Stoner addressed the question of how a congregation discovers its particular mission focus. Three models of congregation/community interaction were presented, based on the mission resourcing people who have led seminars or workshops within this presbytery in recent years:
Community Impact - where a congregation, in response to a perceived need, moves to establish a new mission venture
Community Development - where a congregation seeks to be one partner in community development programmes that lead to healthy, vibrant community
Community Engagement - where some people from a congregation go out and attempt to discover a new context in which they might stay and form missional community |
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Read more...
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Belonging, Believing, Behaving, Becoming |
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Making Disciples in a Postmodern era through Education and Worship
" For the past several decades the Christian Church has found it harder and harder to engage the community in mission. How do we make connections? What are the best ways to do evangelism, discipling, outreach and ministry? This is possibly one of the most difficult mission fields on the face of the planet. It has been so all- consuming to me that I made it the focus of my Doctorate in Ministry dissertation and the four things I want to share tonight, four critical areas for engaging our secular world with the gospel, come out of that work. I hope this will be helpful."
Ian Price was invited by the Synod of Queensland to give the annual Norman and Mary Millar Lecture at their 2004 synod meeting. The full text of his address (with questions for reflection) can be downloaded in the attached pdf. file.
 Belonging Believing Behaving Becoming (164.23 kB)
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Being Church in Rural Community |
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Imagine that you are driving through rural Australia. You turn off the highway into a small country town, pull up in the main street, and ask a passer-by, "Where do I find the Uniting Church?" Before long, a helpful local will direct you to a nearby street where you will find a building that is recognisably a church. In most towns it will be an old stone or brick construction with a high-gabled roof accompanied by one or more "halls" of perhaps more recent construction and, in the back corner of the block, a small outbuilding containing toilets. The whole appearance, buildings and grounds, will be that of a place used only occasionally and on which just enough money and time are spent to prevent it from falling into disrepair. Out the front you will most likely find a sign board which may tell you three things: that this is the (Name) Uniting Church; that worship happens on (some) Sundays at a given hour; and that you may contact person Y - in many cases still Rev Y - phone number supplied. Oh, and it will invariably tell you, "All Welcome".
You will have discovered the three principal ingredients which we have traditionally understood compose "church" in a rural community - building, Sunday worship, and Minister or key leader. But is being church in a rural communty about buildings? about Sunday worship? about the presence of ordained ministry? Are those three ingredients still the most helpful way of understanding "church"?
In the article below, Rob Stoner suggests why those things are no longer the key to being church in our rural communities. Instead he suggests that a working definition that "Church is the community which gathers around a developing faith in Jesus Christ and lives out that faith in, and for the sake of, those who live in the surrounding culture" and explores what it looks like for the church to live this out.
Enjoy reading this article and wrestling with its implications for ministry.
Church in rural Community (71.84 kB)
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