Organisational Leadership B1

A positive change that I have seen in recent church history at Grandview Salvation Army is the focus that has been put on youth discipleship. I was initially a part of the first discipleship program that my previous pastors instigated so I was able to see and experience first-hand the positive impact such a program can have on youth in their later teens.

Previously there hadn’t been a massive focus on specific youth discipling beyond youth groups, which left a gap for youth who were wanting to increase their knowledge of the bible as well as step out and practically be disciples of God (and know what it mean to be that). Although the discipleship group was only small (five to six youth) this allowed the group to discuss freely and without feeling uncomfortable. Looking back it also made the group feel a lot closer knit in comparison to other youth “groups”.

As a result of the growth I and the other youth experienced within the discipleship program me and my husband Dan have begun facilitating another youth discipleship program and like it was done when we were the youth we are focusing on biblical study, support and practical application.

Overall the introduction and inclusion of a youth discipleship program has been hugely welcomed by the wider church community and has seen some amazing things happen as a result of them (me signing up to Carey!!!!). The change and shift to a discipleship approach to youth ministry has proved to be extremely rewarding and produced much fruit, we hope this continues!!!

Organisational Leadership B2

Within our church there is one big change which I have spoken of plenty of times and that is the change in church leadership. Our church has never been a big church and at its biggest the church probably reached around 80 people (which is big for us). We know have around say 20-30 people who regularly go to the church and would call that their home church. This change in leadership had many flow on effects which maybe was not so positive. What I am wanting to talk about with this though is the affect this has had on many of our community ministries and ministries within the church.

We have seen many of our ministries come to an end due to people feeling unsupported or just a big worn out. We have seen our community outreach programme called ‘Lighthouse’ come to an end and this was a programme for primary age kids who could come play games do crafts and hear the gospel.

We have also seen our young adults discipleship come to an end, basically meaning myself and Daniel and maybe 2 others are the only young adults left at the church which is hard in lots of ways.

We have also seen our Kids church on a Sunday morning stop and not be run. This is now finally back up and running but is fairly irregular meaning the children are often in the church on the Sunday morning.

So overall there has been many flow on effects of a sudden change in ministry style and leadership which probably haven’t been the best but I think what I have learnt from this is God does use every situation to grow us and teach us and he always does have a plan whether we want to trust him or not is another story. I think I also have realised how important consistency is within ministry and how important it is to be somewhere creating relationships and building a community with the people who should therefore become like your family.

Planning

To be quite honest our planning process has not been very organised or formal. I haven’t done this very well yet but am still planning to have a big planning session with Dan and our pastors. This isn’t the easiest meeting to set up and hence why it has taken a while. Dan and I have spoken and have plans for this years youth ministry but as of yet haven’t had a formal meeting etc.  So my concerns in this area are that this may be not done as well as possible and for me last year got a bit hectic trying to organise the youth ministry and what we were going to do week by week or month by month. I would love to have a better structure which provides more stability and consistency for the young people and also for myself and Dan as leaders. I would love to have a term by term plan which is fairly structured in terms of dates of events and topics which our studies would be based on etc. but also at the same time be open to change etc. depending on what is going on at the time. I think having dates is easier for parents from the beginning of the term to know what’s on and allows better planning and saving if need be. So we really could do so much better in this area and I am hoping to have this all done this year so that as a youth leader I can be a lot more available to my youth and prepared and organised which allows me to feel so much more settled and no so under pressure or stressed out either.  So yes this is all in the plans to plan but as of yet we have not be successful in having a planning process for the year ahead which is unfortunate.

Community Project

As a part of a programme Daniel and I run in Fraser high school called Aspire the students are required to organise and carry out a community project. This is the third and last aspect of this programme and is the final thing which we do together as a group.

This community project is always really awesome and provides a good opportunity for these young people to give back in their community and knowing that it ok to do things without needing anything in return.

This year the students chose to make up food parcels for Christmas and give them to the western community center to give out to families in need around Christmas time. We made up 20 food parcels full of goodies for Christmas meals and treats.

Dan and I actually ended up doing a lot of the organising this year unfortunately but we managed to get a lot of donations and people willing to help. Although we did a lot of the pre planning the students still had to send out emails to different people and learnt some good skills in writing emails and also making phone calls.

Each student was required to bring something in for a donation and therefore feeling even more a part of the giving. The students wrapped up each box with wrapping paper and decided what was to go in each box. They had a lot of fun and felt really rewarded when we handed all the boxes over to the community center.

School regulations are always a challenge and that’s partly the reason we had do to most of the organising before because getting students out of school is a bit of a nightmare. We found that linking with the community center was also an easier way to get the food parcels out to families as giving them individually also turned out to be harder than expected with school regulations too.

Overall though the community project always pay off and the students have a really good experience doing something they most likely have never done before and seem to always feel really awesome afterwards too. The benefits definitely outweigh the negatives.

Beach Trip

A couple of weeks ago (when the weather was nice) we went on a beach trip with a few of the young people from our church. We went out to Raglan for the day and spent some time together at the beach, swimming, playing games and just hanging out. We also then had some fish and chips before we headed home.

We had this event so that we could just get together over the holidays and catch up and see how everyone was doing and to also just have a bit of fun and to get people to the beach on a beautiful day.

We had heaps of fun together and always find these events a really cool way to spend time with the young people and to see them in a different environment is always good too. We end up having some good chats on the drives and lots of good laughs too. To be quite honest we find it a really good way to also give back to the young people for what they do as well and to just give them a chance to have some fun and to create friendships with other young people with similar values to them.

We would like these events to start reaching a lot of the other young people in our community and provide a link between us and them so that we can create relationships with more of the people within our community and see more of them coming along to our youth ministry.  Also so that we can just be people who they know are there for them and a safe place to come to.

I think what we need to do differently is just have better promotion in order to get those young people there that are within our community and be a lot more prepared with dates in advanced to get the information out there.

Preaching

I only did one sermon throughout this summer and I was able to choose the topic which I got to preach on. Looking back on the service and my preaching I know that I am each time becoming more and more confident in myself and also in what I have prepared.

I chose for this sermon the topic of Purpose. I chose this because God actually just lead me to this throughout the week when I was planning and it just kept on popping up in my brain as I was deciding and I knew that was the topic I was supposed to choose.

The sermon went well and also fitted in really well with the rest of the service. I was still nervous but I think the size of my church and also the people in it make it a lot less intimidating as the whole church is very open to any one giving preaching a go which is awesome.

I am definitely still relying heaps on my notes and can’t seem to figure out or maybe am too scared to give anything else a go. I am definitely not as reliant on them as I was but still have to have a full manuscript and pretty much read the whole thing.

I think for this sermon I probably wasn’t prepared enough in knowing my sermon and so that didn’t help the flow and delivery of it either. I also think my voice is still fairly similar the whole way through and I need to exaggerate things and use gestures a lot more throughout to keep people engaged and interested.

I think for this sermon I didn’t really have a whole lot of illustration or personal experience which I know listeners like to hear and find interesting so I need to use that a bit more too.

But overall, the church seemed to respond really positively and it linked in so well with lots of different things going on in the church at the moment so that was awesome.

Organisational Leadership

How is leadership spread throughout the church? How are teams formed, equipped, and empowered?

This is an interesting dynamic within the Salvation Army as it is entirely dependent on the Corp Officers which are placed at your church.

Within our Church at the moment we have Corp officers who are quite keen to hand on jobs to the church and have the church running the church with the mind set of, if they had to leave or got moved on the church would be just fine without them.

This can be a really awesome and effective way for the church to run but for this to happen the level of leadership isn’t as easy or as laidback as what I think it might be thought to be. In order for this to happen the culture has to be set. The right people also need to be chosen for each job and with being in a very small church numbers are very limited.

Leadership through our church is pretty much a put your hand up and in your in kind of thing. The only real selection for leadership is for the leadership team of the church which consists of a few people who look at the mission and finance etc. of the church. Apart from this leadership throughout our church is given to mostly anyone who is willing to put their name forward. Which to be honest is always the same people anyway.

Teams are formed by the Corp Officers. They in general choose who is going to be on the specific team. But again this is mostly done by a who is willing to volunteer kind of thing. But once a team is formed they are mostly left on their own and the equipping and empowering is often left or forgotten about or possibly just an unknown area.

In saying all of this, We have many awesome people within our church who are willing to give up their time and they are thanked at the end of the year with a celebration dinner.

Missional Leadership

Missional Leadership: Walk #2

These walks to be honest are not something I find very easy to implement into my routine as I feel like I don’t always have the time and I’m not so sure if I always get the most out of them. Not sure if that’s a good excuse or not….

But in saying this I have been on another walk throughout my neighbourhood which is the neighbourhood which our church is based.

I think one thing I have noticed through this particular walk was the huge difference between one area of Nawton and the other. The massive change in demographic between one area of the suburb to the other. Nawton is known for being a lower socio-economic area of Hamilton but this is becoming less and less true in some areas which are now called or known as, Grandview heights. This is becoming a very developed and high socioeconomic area. Which causes quite a divide between the two areas with no actual boundary except a roundabout.

This to me is interesting and I just wonder how this dynamic has an impact on our church and the people who attend.

I think God is doing good things in Nawton, and this is also shown to me by an awesome new playground put in the centre of the community where all the kids can hang out and interact together. Awesome.

Pastoral Visit

Pastoral Visit #2

This visit was with a girl within our youth ministry who we have quite a good connection with. She is someone who is in our discipleship group and has heaps of potential to be a really awesome leader if she lets herself.

Before the visit is was fine. Happy to catch up and see how her holidays were going. After the visit I was feeling good. I was feeling like it’s much easier to have these visits with young people who you have a good relationship with already. Even though I know those relationships only can be developed when you have these visits and time to get to know each other which then obviously means doing pastoral visits with young people I don’t know as well. Sometimes I do those ones in groups of two though just until everyone is comfortable etc.

I think during this visit I learned or was reminded of what we had learnt in one of our formation classes. The importance of just listening. Instead of always being so quick to have a reply or thinking of a reply while the young person is talking to you. It’s so important to just listen and be present. It also has an impact on them if you cut into their conversation before they had finished talking. They may be less likely to share everything they were going to if they always know you won’t let them finish. So for me I learnt and was reminded to just listen and be present with the young person who I am visiting and this is something I want to grow in and develop more and be more intentional about it.

I think I am always surprised on these visits how much I can learn from the young person.

Event: End of year dinner

Throughout the year we try to have events every fortnight. These are open to our youth group and also people within the Nawton community who me and Dan may meet at school. They are a good way for us to create relationships in a relaxed and fun environment which are not intimidating and are created to be inviting and accepting of all types of young people.

We had our last event for the year going to Gengys for dinner to celebrate the year we have had together and to have some food and chats before everyone goes off on holiday and celebrates for Christmas and the New Year.

As I said we have these events in order to create relationships outside of our bible studies and also just to create time to have fun together. Sometimes they can seem a lot of effort but when we go out and have fun together and have shared experiences etc. which grow our relationships and allow them to go deeper and also allow more conversations to happen in a relaxed environment it all seems worth it.

We also see more friends and family coming to these events compared to our bible study which allows new relationships to be made in a informal and friendly environment which is not normally at a church which makes it even more inviting to some people who we can then create a relationship with.

This event in particular went really well and was a nice way for us to say thank you to the young people for their commitment and effort they put in to the youth ministry and also to just say goodbye until we see them again in the new year.