Lausanne World Pulse – World Pulse Archives – World Pulse Archives
It’s exciting to visit a church and meet with a missions pastor who is thinking outside the box, who is moving a church through change. I come away feeling like that scout, thinking that with these new ideas, the missions game may never be the same. There are men and women out there, raising the bar in missions.
One such encounter happened a few years ago when I met to consult with Matt Reid, the recently hired Pastor of International Ministries at Calvary Church in Souderton, Pennsylvania. The first thing I noticed about Matt was that he was very impatient with mediocrity. We talked about strategy and vision. Matt believes you lead well when you lead with vision. He wanted to talk about designing a strategy that would work, that would lead their rapidly growing church through change in thinking about missions.
I am not hesitant to say that what I have observed over the past few years at Calvary is pace-setting. Matt has laid out a workable strategic plan with a great set of guidelines to go along with one of the best plans I’ve seen.
What follows are some highlights taken from the “Strategy Statement and Plan” at Calvary Church. Let me say here that before the statement of Calvary’s role in the global church movement was ever stated, significant research was done on the world situation, the state of the international church and the realities of the American church (see box). Here’s what developed:
Calvary’s Role in the Global Church Planting Movement:
1. Calvary must become an active participant in global church planting. It must see itself as a servant-leader providing resources, both human and financial, to the international church. This is clearly reflected in our mission, vision and strategy statements.
Mission: Calvary’s International Ministries exists to strategically deploy people and resources around the world to introduce lost people to Jesus Christ and to help them become fully devoted followers.
Vision: For the church-to see every person at Calvary Church become actively involved in International Ministries For the world-to see God raise up indigenously led, self-sustaining, reproducing churches in targeted regions of the world. Strategy: To make a significant impact by targeting several key regions of the world.
Strategy: To make a significant impact by targeting several key regions of the world.
2. To effectively accomplish our mission and vision, Calvary’s International Ministries program will have three separate but overlapping initiatives: Personnel Initiatives-missionary personnel must be viewed as a global extension of Calvary’s ministry. Therefore the relationship between Calvary and its missionaries must be a true partnership. This is where the church, missionary and agency work as a team to accomplish mutually agreed upon goals.”
Let me mention here that I believe the cooperation of missionary, home church and agency in vision-setting and strategy is vital. I am discouraged when I visit missions committees who are not sure exactly what the missionary is doing and have had no significant dialogue with the sending agency. This is unacceptable.
Within the context of their vision and goals, Calvary also established geographic initiatives which meant that they would be specific about where in the world Calvary should invest, project initiatives (when they come with defined goals and outcomes) and organizational initiatives. These guidelines mean that sometimes missions teams must make hard choices and frequently they must say “no”-even when a need is great, or an idea exciting. A strong vision must stay focused.
The final piece in their strategic statement and plan was “Support Specifics.” Calvary carefully defined and then published the allocation of their funds giving definite percentages for funding in certain regions of the world. Six global regions were targeted. Then they also allocated support for personnel within these specified global regions. That personnel funding would be allocated under specific ministry areas. The three categories were: home office personnel, personnel ministering in field offices and personnel ministering on the front line.
I’m sure I’ve read hundreds of Mission Committee “mission statements” during my career in missions. I find this one to be creative, clearly focused and forward thinking. Critics say to me, “But where’s the place for the Holy Spirit in a strategy like this?” I believe he was there in the planning meeting and will certainly see his work through to the end.
Yup, I do have a great job, and watching talent like I’m seeing at Calvary Church reminds me of why I got into this game in the first place!
Tom Telford is vice-president of church mobilization for United World Mission.
January 25, 2002