The life-cycle of a city or town pastors’ group

Our work in this area involves… 

1

Travel

We have travelled an enormous amount to meet pastors and pastors’ groups relationally  across our nation — to facilitate and feed a intentional and directional conversations, while connecting people together, and raising awareness of ministry ideas that are making a difference elsewhere. (We’ve traveled nationally 8 times in 11 years, meeting between 50 and 70 city/town pastors’ groups each time). Into the future we intend to travel less – utilising other (easier) platforms to encourage and connect pastors’ groups with wider vision and resource.

2

Resources

Various resources and updates on a range of initiatives are passed on via quarterly updates for pastors’ group convenors. Updates include things upcoming on the national Church calendar, strategic questions for discussion in pastors’ groups, resources, articles, videos and more –  with a view to the role and function of city/town pastors’ groups. We also occasionally host, or partner to host seminars / conferences / webinars with notable guest speakers — to give access to a continual feed of fresh vision and thought on our unity.

3

Leadership Facilitation

(1) We sometimes engage with pastor’s groups as an outside strategic voice, to encourage, mediate, speak into challenges, connect or give ideas. (2) We also engage around ‘hands on’ strategies purposed to help God’s Church have positive visibility via public media – locally and nationally. Hope Project and HeLP Project are the primary ‘brand names’ here – positively reflecting what our churches do to the public – with multiple spin offs in churches and media.  (3) For a future time, our analysis of the Church and our culture has led us to a number of additional very simple national outreach-related strategies – but these await a different season to the present. We believe a greater ‘spiritual brokenness’ for our nation will be the key, creating a desire for effectiveness that brings a readiness for change – greater than our our attachment to our current structures and ways of thinking. What we are specifically waiting for is readiness to live and lead more intentionally in the unity-space. For now, few are desperate enough. Doing our own thing – whether as individual churches, or even as pastors groups together in our own city, is easier. Wider visions, that engage with culture itself, are about a different type of thinking!

In One Spirit, by Dave Mann

Download full book as pdf here.

The Christian Church is no longer in the majority. How could we become an effectively activated minority?

This book is the product of conversations about unity with about 1000 New Zealand pastors.

• The first half considers how culture changes and can be changed. It then identifies 5 cultural trends working against the wider hopes of the Christian community — and 3 working in its favour, to consider their potential interplay.
• The second half is then specifically on the unity of churches in cities and towns, with a focus on the role, function and potential of city/town pastors’ groups.

Download pdf here, or purchase hardcopy for $20 plus $5 P&P here.

PASTORS’ GROUP CONVENORS

We attempt to remain relationally connected to whoever is facilitating each group, to be able to enable communication lines across which ideas and resources related to pastors’ groups from across the nation can be shared. This includes raising awareness of about 20 ministries that we see significance in for unity and outreach in our nation (as measured by what pastors’ groups have told us), while also networking people and pastors’ groups where it benefits them.

HOPE PROJECT REGIONAL REPS

These are exceptional individuals, usually being retired pastors and business owners, who make phone calls to local churches in connection with something concrete (like Hope Project or HeLP Project) to encourage their continued awareness of various resources (like for conversational outreach equipping), while aiding and encouraging their unity together in some practical way.

DELIVERY COORDINATORS (DCs)

This is the contact person in each city or town for the Hope Project Easter booklet delivery. The role gives a person a servant role to play that concurrently gives them reason to connect personally with a wide range of churches in their city or town. This can be catalytic in the hands of a person who understands how unity works, and who values it for the churches together in their city. This person is usually a pastor in the city/town pastors’ group, though not always.

HeLP PROJECT REP

This is someone who has a zeal to ensure that the Church as a whole in their city or town is well represented, and ‘looks good’ (as it should) in the HeLP Project online platform, purposed to promote the things local churches are doing to help within each community, so people can find and engage with that help. This is about helping churches learn to represent as one within and to their communities, to make a greater impact – through better-leveraging what they already do!

IMPORTANT BOUNDARIES

In the current season (2017 to the present) facilitating intentional discussions in unity circles on boundaries necessary for unity to become functional within our cities and nation has been our primary strategic focus.

For a boundary regarding ourselves, we are servants in the body of Christ. No person or group has to partner with us, fund us, help us or do anything at all with us if they don’t want to. This ‘volunteerism’ is fundamental to the way Christian unity works.

(For more on the boundaries that can release our unity beyond the limitations of coffee and prayer …please do read ‘In One Spirit’, especially noting the closing chapter).