Update for Meeting: 2009-04-08

We had a lively meeting last night with the Mission/Vision Team. We spent some time looking at who we are again. It's like a compass, you really can't use a compass to get you out of the woods, unless you first know where you are. Same with the mission - how can you go forward as a church, unless you have some idea of where you are?

Some of the things that keep coming up are:

• The 80/20 rule - 80% of the work is done by 20% of the members. 80% of the food at potlucks is brought by 20% of the eaters. 80% of the money given is done by 20% of the people who attend.
• Buy-in. There are a number of issues where the congregation is passively sitting and watching and where a few people are doing it all (this relates to the one above)
• Our facility is great
• Our debt is a negative that needs to be tackled
• Outreach, Evangelism, Mission to the community is very strong in our wish list, but not much is really happening. (But we're excited about Pastor Gene's upcoming seminar)
• Community within the walls is not happening, we don't even really know what it is
• Discipleship needs a process to advance it forward at a much stronger level
• We have truth and it needs to be shared
• We need to discuss these things with everyone in the church. We all need to have buy-in to this process. We all need to start the discussion with the rest of the church.

At the end of the meeting, we talked about how most churches are really only reaching about 7% of the community. That includes the Methodists, the Baptists, the Non-denominationals, and everyone else. It also includes us, as Adventists. Thom Rainer, in his book "Surprising Insights from the Unchurched" writes that we - Adventists - are the BEST denomination at reaching the unchurched. There is only one group that does better - and it's just a wee bit better - it's the non-denominational group.

How do Adventists reach anyone? Mostly, throughout the world, they are reached through our traditional evangelism. Statistics from the seminary tell us that of those the Adventist church is baptizing, 75% come from the unchurched background. We tend to think it's the opposite. We tend to think it's different. We tend to not like Evangelism nearly as much as we should. Read this post if you'd like some understanding as to why Adventists don't like Evangelism.

We concluded with watching a couple of videos - one was about building airplanes while they fly - it described what this team is trying to do. It's a process of taking a group of people who are moving forward, but also tweaking its direction, bring all ministries into alignment, and then also sending us out into the community. It's a process of refinement. It's building while it flies.

Next week we're going to start getting some snapshots of the area of Clark County. Who are we trying to reach. We have a bit of a better picture of who we are. Now we can look at the idea of who we are trying to reach. Then the next steps will be to define our Mission - which is a contemporary restatement of the Gospel Commission in Matthew 28, our Vision - which is defining what it will look like when we are accomplishing our mission, our Core Values - which will define HOW we do ministry as we pursue our Mission. Once we have those things in place, we can begin the process of making our decisions based on those things. All decisions will eventually be defined by our mission, vision and values.

So - let's keep going forward as we Reach the Lost and Grow the Disciples. Pray for the process and the team of people working on it.

God Bless!

Roger Walter

Senior Pastor

Adventist Community Church of Vancouver