Using church resources to best effect

By Rev Martin Baker
Assembly Executive Secretary

As I speak with presbyteries and other groups, I have become increasingly aware of the challenge of developing a uniting and corporate mission. There is general agreement that there is no place in Christian mission for resources to be "stored up in barns", unavailable for funding new church planting or other ministry and mission initiatives.
On the other hand, I find there is real resistance to either the centralised gathering of resources or the use of Church legislative processes that could be used to influence or even compel declining congregations to release their resources to support new mission and ministry elsewhere. These matters have a strong pastoral element, as well as reflecting on our understanding of faithfulness, stewardship, what it means to be Christ's Church , and the hope we have for the future.
There are small and large congregations who right now would gain huge benefit from the funding of a new ministry position. We could plant versions of Studentsoul on campuses around New Zealand; we could help congregations fund a new work in some of the fastest growing parts of New Zealand; and we would like to place new ministry graduates in places where they could best use their skills and gifts (and not only among the congregations who could afford to pay them).
Some of our most vital and outreaching congregations face large debt burdens. The simple cost of supporting any kind of ongoing new initiative or capital expense is moving beyond the means of even our largest congregations - or even groups of congregations to afford. I have had wide ranging discussions about the possible processes or mechanisms that could be established to allow a common sharing and benefit in the use of our collective resources.
What needs to happen for us to reinvest the resources that are already available to us, in the people and communities who could make such a difference for our future as a Church together? I am told that the answer involves a change in our Church culture. Such a change emerges both from a sense of urgency based on an analysis of our present situation and the development of a solution-focused vision for the future. Central to such a process are the great confessions of resurrection at the heart of our Biblical faith and a thanksgiving for the ways in which the Spirit has moved in the life of our Church.