Vision Night

Vision night 2023

Welcomes - Sit down

What we are going to go through tonight

Honour Past | Talk about where we are | Talk about where we going

Freedom Church

Planted in 2014 - Pastor Thomas - Originally with Acts Global

Cornerstone Church Merge

2014 - Merged with Cornerstone Busselton - Unique Model - Not campus / Not location - 2 Seperate Expressions - It was a good thing - I put on staff as Assistant Pastor shortly after

Cornerstone Church Busselton 2

Provided Governance | Vision | Structure | It was a good thing | Administration Support

The Takeover - 2021

October 2020 - Thomas told me he was leaving back to fam | Me take over | Emma was a real rock of Faith | We took over the church 7 years to the day on Easter Sunday

The Takeover - 2021 - Slide 2

Tough Transition | 1 Person that could do Worship | 13 People on Mothers Day | God’s word “Faithful” | Just be consistant | keep showing up | Keep loving - Really important to me to love like Jesus - and lead from the front. First time Acts 2:42 Got put on my heart.

Brings us to 2022 - Last Year

Focus on Discipleship - 1 - Build a healthy Base - 2 Equip Disciple making Disciples, 3 - Release Leaders - 4- Reach the Community

Baptisms

9 Baptisms - Amazing move of God | In Winter - down at the foreshore

Connect Groups

Busselton + Margaret River

(Sam to come up- talk about Connect Group)

Events - Passover

(Treva) - Bunco - Other Great events - Mens - Womens - Bonfire at the Hondema’s

Numbers - Visitors and Tithes

2019 - Average = 51

2020 - Average = 51

2021 - Average = 48

Current Average = 83

Tithes = Increased $1,200 per month

Break and Worship

Brings us to now

Why are we leaving?

God spoke during a prayer | People started talking about starting external ministry | God really convicted me during a conference | God’s word - 1 Timothy

The Process

Pray | Consult both people within our Church and Externally - Liam and Bill | Discuss with Ps. Lee (God spoke to Him) | Elders meeting | Endorsed by Churches of Christ - Who we will stay under

Structure and COCWA

The way it worked was us and Cornerstone sort of where affiliated with Churches of Chirst

Welcome Ps. Bill Addison

Boring Stuff

Quite a lot to setup

Run through it all

Governance Structure

Oversight/Elders

Leadership Team / Ministry Team

Servant Leadership Team

Organisation

Organism

Governance

Still being setup - Can’t set that up, and set up a church - 2 different things

Leadership team - At the moment

Myself - A little bit about me.

Treva - Sam - Gerlind - Already running ministries

Staff - Treva - .2 - Ministry Support

Mission, Purpose and Values

Acts 2:42-47 -

As a Church Body we will be devoted to: Apostles Teaching, Fellowship, breaking of bread and Prayer.

To create a community that displays the love of Jesus and reflects the heart of the early church while leading people to be fully devoted followers of Christ.

Why?

Acts 2:42–47 ESV

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Psalm 133:1–3 ESV

Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity! It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes! It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion! For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore.

There is this picture of getting unity right in here first - We often want God to move, but we forsake what comes first - Unity - If we are all in unity, we are listening to what the Spirit is saying ,and in that environment - God will bless, God will add to the number.

We often say that Deliverance starts with a decision, so does Unity, Unity starts with Devotion.

We want the world to look on and say “This doesn’t make sense” - Why do they love each other so much? Why are they so different?

So if that is our Mission, our Purpose needs to flow on from that.

Ok, so what’s our Purpose?

Facilitate growth, love and truth amongst God's people to equip them to serve Jesus and be devoted to advancing God's kingdom while being the hands and feet of Jesus for our community

Our Values to get us there;

We are Truth-Seeking, Spirit led, Faith Filled Warriors of God

We are being equipped and have BIG Faith to advance God’s Kingdom.

We are spiritual contributors, not spiritual consumers.

The church does not exist for us. We are the church, and we exist for the world. If we don’t live with integrity nothing else matters.

We give up things we love for things we love even more.

It’s an honour to sacrifice for Christ and His church.

We care and will build a culture of discipleship

Discipleship changed the world, and as it was modelled by Jesus, we too will be disciples of Christ.

We will lead the way in being ridiculously generous and wise stewards.

We believe it is more blessed to give than to receive. We understand the Tithe, we trust the Provider over the Provision.

We will be devoted to teaching in our church and in houses.

We believe the way to stay connected is through growth groups and our growth groups are the heartbeat of our church.

We are all about the local Church

The local church is the hope of the world, and we know we can accomplish infinitely more together than apart.

We will do anything short of sin to reach people who don’t know Christ.

To reach people no one is reaching, we’ll have to do things no one is doing.

God's truth has the power to change lives

We will be known for what we are for, rather than what we are against as we value God's truth.

We are the hands and feet of Jesus to our Local Community

We are to be the light and serve the needs within our local community.

We are equipping our Body

My Role in the Body

1 Peter 5:2–3 ESV

shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

An Insight

I see part of my role as a Pastor is to equip our people and assist others to live out God’s calling for their life as directed by the Holy Spirit (and not direct their calling, that's God's job, not mine) and part of my role as a Pastor is to assist them in listening to that calling and facilitate personal growth toward a Christ-like character. You will be able to minister to someone much more effectively if you can understand their perspective. We all have different lenses based on personal experience that causes us to see the world differently, if we can seek to understand, before seeking to be understood, it will go a long way toward empathetic leadership.

A big part of doing this is to step out of the trees, so you can see the forest so that you can best plan how to lay the path through it.

After all, we all have a role to play in the Body of Christ and while some may come with different authority levels, they are all equal in importance for the Body of Christ to operate. We are all building the path, the Pastor is simply facilitating the leadership of the construction.

We have to be willing to be transformed, and keep growing toward Christs Character - I remember the relationship of Moses and Jethro, and how that conversation (Jethro rejoiced, and then offered Moses the advice) caused Moses to change and adapt to the new context, release leaders and prologue his leadership by transforming his leadership style to adapt to the context.

I am grateful for the Jethro's in my life who are assisting me to navigate the current landscape, I have found getting everyone on the battleship and cultivating a 'we' culture to be very helpful. I would rather be an eastern world shephard with people willing to follow rather than an australian shephard who are sitting behind the cattle wacking them with a Whip if they get out of line.

Less me and more God. I, like many people, need to humble myself constantly and realise it's God's Church, God's Plan, and God's people, everyone in the church are merely stewards of His Church for a time.

Get a seat at the table!!

What to Expect

Quick look at a Church Gathering.

Preaching: 3 Goals: Preach to Equip | Preach to inspire and Encourage | Preach to challenge, grow and convict

Kids Church: Purpose; The grow our children with an understanding of the love and Awe of God | To help our children understand the gospel truth of Jesus Christ | To grow relation connections (God and others) | Grow Disciples

Mission; Abroad; Empart Ministries | Local; Local Community

Ok the name…Just Kidding

THE FUTURE