From the Pasto’r Heart
From the Pastor’s Heart
Here’s Hope Great Commission Cluster
I have a life wish for Azalea Baptist Church! I do not just want to see this church survive, but I want this church to thrive. I know that I am not alone. Some of you have had this same yearning for years, and have witnessed much of your life wish for the church come to fruition. And we celebrate God’s legacy of providence. Yet I still believe “the best is yet to come!”
I am not content to stay at the same level that we are currently experiencing. Why? Because the harvest is plentiful…
…and the workers are few….
We can rejoice that the harvest is plentiful. But what do we do about the the workers are few part?
This is where the Here’s Hope Great Commission Cluster comes into play. It is not another program to go through, not another method to study. So many of you have been through those things and the results just didn’t stick.
If we are willing to invest time and energy, the Norfolk Area Baptist Association will invest the money to leverage a breakthrough strategy for our congregation. This tested and proven approach is based on the work of empowering pastors and lay leaders to lead their church to fulfill our God-given mission of making disciples. Dr. Paul D. Borden, author of three books: Hit the Bull’s-eye, Direct Hit, and Assaulting the Gates will lead the Great Commission Cluster. This strategy is the result of tested and proven methods which have resulted in many churches fulfilling the Great Commission.
What does this process look like?
There are three dimensions of the Here’s Hope Great Commission Cluster:
1 – Monthly cluster meetings for the pastor for one year. This will be one-day events and will be devoted to training and inspiration and will include pastors who have successfully led churches beyond the size of the largest church represented in the cluster. Why the focus on numbers? Because numbers represent things, and in this case it represents lost people who have been found by the Savior.
2- Consultations for our congregation. Each church will receive a weekend consultation led by a team of consultants, who will study our church history, community context, conduct focus group and individual interviews, provide teaching, preaching, inspiration and share insights gleaned from thousands of such church consultations.
3 – Lay training events during the year. At least two training event will be held during the year in order to further inspire and equip members of the cluster churches.
The Cluster will consist of 8-10 churches. Thalia Lynn, Kings Grant, Great Bridge and others have already committed to being a part of the Great Commission Cluster. We are being extended an opportunity to join them. If we pass up this opportunity, I would not want to be the one answering to the Lord why we thought we were doing just fine without it.
Outside of the time and energy investment, the only cost is to be a participating member of the Association (which we are in good standing) and to provide a meal during the weekend training after the Sunday worship service for that weekend. This means that our kitchen crew, who work so faithfully, will be forced to “let someone else cook for them.”
That’s a small price to pay for such an opportunity. I look forward to continuing our dialogue about the Here’s Hope Great Commission Cluster!
See you at “the Sunday morning place to be”….rejoicing in the harvest and thrilled to be a worker in the field!
Pastor John
Nice writing. You are on my RSS reader now so I can read more from you down the road.
Allen Taylor