Proposed New Structure for GWUC

You will all be aware of the proposal coming from the recent Church Life and Witness consultation to re-structure our church governance. Carolyn Kitto, in her report, suggests that in order to reduce the “dissonance” in many areas of our church life, we need to re-kindle and re-establish the spiritual leadership of our church.

Elders and Church Council have themselves for some years been in misalignment with current Uniting Church visions. We had special permissions for their structure because of our size, but now seems to be a time when we should re-examine them. The Future Directions Steering Committee appointed by the Congregation at its meeting on 17 Mar 2013 has been searching for the way forward so that we can build upon a “Community of Love”.

This document sets out a proposed new structure that will see church council reduced in size to a body of 10 elected members, and a shift in focus from the traditional council/elders leadership to a new “missional leadership”, where the mission groups that we set up in 2010 as part of our Growing Generous Givers program will be at the forefront of our church energy. Council will become more strategic and discerning in facilitating our missional work.

NewStructureDiagram.png

We usually put the most important thing in a structure at the top. That should not be the church council , but instead as the diagram shows, it is God's people living out God's mission. All the wonderful things at GWUC will be supporting God’s mission in this place. The missional groups will have responsibility for living God's mission. They will have the resources: enthusiastic volunteers, ministry team members, money for resources and the permission to respond to their mission.

The church council's role is to hold the soul of the congregation, to provide spiritual oversight and governance in support of God's mission at GWUC, and most importantly, to be a Community of Love and to encourage all the groups in our Church to be Communities of Love. Both the ministry team and the elected councillors will model servant leadership.

God's mission at GWUC is dependent upon good management of our property, financial resources and communication. A committee for each is shown on the structure. It is important to remember that Paul talks about 'Administration' as a spiritual gift and we need to recognize it as such.

So where is the ministry team in this structure? Actually they are everywhere bringing their special gifts to work alongside the congregation in living God's mission at GWUC.

Age Specific Ministry Groups

The life and witness process has identified that it is important that faith formation and ministry considers age specific groups. Hence we suggest that most of the current groups will find a place for themselves in the matrix below, so that they continue to exist and will form the mission delivery bodies in the missional groups. The missional groups will provide resources for the initiatives from these groups. An initial draft of how this may work is shown below. Please do not get upset if your group is not mentioned as (Praise God!) there are over 80 active groups within our church, and we cannot fit all of them into our diagram!

AgeSpecificMinistryDiagram.png

The steering committee hopes that the GWUC community will find that this re-orientation of the church structure will give it new life to be a community of love living God’s mission.

The steering committee looks forward to discussing the structure life with the missional groups and age specific ministry groups over the next few weeks. Please talk about this new structure with your fellow parishioners, and send any comments you may have to one or more of the Steering Committee listed below. You are welcome to contact any member of the committee if you feel the need for a face- to-face chat, or alternatively, any of us are happy to address your group if you do want to know more.

GWUC Future Directions Steering Committee

ChurchNewStructures2013 (last edited 2013-05-25 03:26:21 by JohnHurst)