Setting Goals for future direction

At the Board meeting on Monday I shared with our leaders the 6 strategic goals voted by our Division leaders (North American Adventist Church executive team) on November 6.   In a keynote sermon preceding meetings, president Dan Jackson spoke against “inauthentic, judgmental Christianity” and urged all to face the fact that “genuine fellowship is often lacking our churches … it is not seen and experienced in the way we treat those who disagree or in the way we treat one another … and it is killing us. It turns people off.”

 Next Saturday night we will come together as a church in Business session to discuss our future direction, our goals and plans for 2013, and further to 2020.  As you think what we can do for the community around us, I invite you to consider these 6 goals set for all churches in the North American division of our world-wide church.

1)       “Retention of young adults … through a revitalized campus ministries program along with [local] church activities that engage their interests and energies.”

2)       Extending “Adventist education [to] everyone using innovative online modalities to increase enrollment of school-age children and youth” as well as “enable the local church to serve as a key community learning center.”

3)       Expanding “the potential and practice of women clergy” including “better member education, increased mentoring and [improved] recruitment, support and affirmation” from Church administrators.

4)       “Evangelism and outreach specifically targeted to large cities and native-born [North] Americans.” In the NAD territory four out of five residents live in the metropolitan areas and three out four are native-born, not immigrants while Adventist growth is concentrated among immigrants and local churches are more likely to be in non-metropolitan communities.

5)       Develop “a coherent media strategy with an emphasis on social media” instead of traditional television, radio and print formats.

6)       Continue to evangelize “emerging immigrant people groups” where the Adventist Church has had the most significant response in the last three decades.

Each one of these goals is significant and important to our congregation.  We have scores of young adults related to our church families, living in the community yet not joining this body of Christ with a mission.  We have a church school with excellent teachers, Patricia and Dayna, ready to invest more in your children.  Are you willing to sacrifice to give your children a protected environment for a few more years, to allow their spirituality mature?  What would it take for us to connect with rapidly growing immigrant community in our urban setting? (London is 15^th city in Canada by population size!)  Prayerfully consider how you may make an impact for Christ where you are.