The Diocesan Mission and Strategy

The parish representatives have gathered for the annual meeting of the diocesan synod. It is unique this year in that most of its business has been given over to considering and adopting the vision outlined by the archbishop.

The vision has been well aired and discussed in previous editions of The Flame. The vision, goal and strategies (in draft form) were printed in a previous edition and the parish council has already considered them.

The Synod has adopted them, and has started to use them as a basis for the allocation of diocesan monies. The money ordinance makes the allocations according to their place in five policies.

The five policies are:

• Spiritual Renewal
• Expenditure Outside the Diocese
• To enable parish churches to expand and become mother churches
• Background support for the expansion of congregations and fellowships
• To multiply well-trained persons- ordained, lay, full and part-time
• To reform the structure and processes of the Diocese
• Administration of the Mission

This new budgetary policy is being phased in for a better transition.

It was heartening to see the time and energy given in plenary and small group discussion to the priority of the vision:

To call upon God for such outpouring of his Spirit that his people will be assured of his love through his word, seek to please the Saviour in all things, manifest the godly life and be filled with prayerful and sacrificial compassion for the lost in all the world.

The appropriate resolution included the request of Synod, among other items, That “each level of the diocese also have such special conferences, prayer days or nights, conventions, rallies and seminars to promote prayerful dependence upon God and attention to the teaching of his word”; and that “clergy commit regular time to pray with their colleagues in other parishes.”

All church members are encouraged to read the booklet containing Archbishop Peter Jensen’s address. You will note that he makes a distinction between Christ’s call to mission and the particular form the diocesan leadership is suggesting for it.

I would encourage us at St. Luke’s to commit to it. Apart from prayer our most immediate need is for new labourers for the harvest. The lord is giving us areas in which to move, but to go there were need a broader leadership base.

When the Lord appointed the Seventy evangelists (anonymous and therefore ordinary like us), he told them:

The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. He also said I have given you authority over serpents and scorpions, and to overcome all the power of the enemy. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. (Luke 10: 2-3, 19-20)

Lindsay Johnstone

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