As a community of followers of Jesus, Turramurra Uniting is committed to be a church centred on Jesus; a family that cares and supports each other and people who strive to continue the work of Jesus through sharing love and the Good News of God’s grace, forgiveness and life that we have found.
But we are finding that as society changes and our lifestyles change, the programs and ideas that worked so successfully in the past are not as effective now. We are facing a number of critical questions and issues such as what model of ministry might work as we head towards 2030? How are we helping people and our church community to grow? What does it mean to be a lighthouse church? How do we resource our church in terms of property, volunteers, finances? Just addressing one of these questions would be a huge undertaking … how do we even start on addressing all the questions. We might feel like an astronaut in a gyroscope—being spun in many different directions as we struggle find which way forward God is leading us.
We believe that God is inviting us as a church to use 2025 as a year of prayerful discernment and strategic planning as we ponder the future of our church. We invite you to join us as we step back and look at the big picture and be willing to put everything on the table. We will be care and honesty ponder what might be the critical questions or issues that we need to ask or address as we move forward. We wish to asses the effectiveness or fruitfulness of our approaches and how we can be most spiritually and pastorally helpful to both those in our community and those who are seeking help or answers in Jesus. We trust in the leading of the Holy Spirit to guide us on this journey and seek the input and wisdom of all voices connected to this church when we come to finding creative and innovative solutions. We are not sure where God might ultimately lead us but we trust in God’s goodness.
Two models for Mission Planning
A Model for Church Mission Planning (Dave & Dave)
SCOPE – Taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture. What questions do we need to ask? What do we need to notice? What extra information or research do we need?
GENERATE – What creative ideas or solutions emerge from collaborative discussions and brainstorming? Are these realistic and achievable?
BUILD – How do we bring these ideas or solutions to life? How can we make any solution sustainable?
Another Model for Church Mission Planning (Double Diamond)
“Go wide” – Put everything on the table. Get input from many diverse voices. Write everything down.
“Narrow it Down” – We don’t have capacity to address everything. What are the critical questions or ideas to take on?
A Mission Plan or Process for 2025
Stage #1 – February to April
In the run up to Easter we will be guided by Dave Cornford (and his friend Dave) in conversations designed to identify critical questions or important issues or challenges that might impact us moving forward. We have already got a start on such a list from some conversations at the end of 2024 but now opening this up to the whole church. We will be facilitating some small group discussion that you might like to be a part of or you can share your thoughts or insights by accessing an online survey (click here).
It is key that we are able to hear from as many different voices of people connected to TUC, not only your insights on the questions or challenges you discern, but also how you would distil or narrow all these questions or issues down to the five most critical one. Not to say they all aren’t important but we believe we only have the capacity to start with five. By Easter we hope to as a church community have some consensus on this.
Stage #2 – May to June
Stage 2 will take place in May and June and will be a church-wide mission planning process led by our Church Council and ministry team. Our goal is to take the questions or issues identified in stage 1 and through research, brainstorming and prayerful discernment see what creative or innovative ideas or programs or solutions emerge.
We will be holding some larger gatherings open to everyone connected to TUC where we will push the “diamond” wide where we will encourage all ideas and write down everything. We imagine that this might be more than tinkering at the edges here but could be as radical as new models for ministry and mission. We will also encourage some honest conversations about sustainability — striving to make sure that we are effective and producing fruit in all that we do.
It is our hope come up with loads of ideas … but the reality is that we just don’t have the capacity to follow up or explore every solution or idea (at least not immediately). Our goal is that by July we can narrow this down to a handful of clear, realistic, sustainable (and hopefully innovative) things that we can try.
Stage #3 – August to September
In August and September we hope to run the third of the “Imagining Hope” programs … called “Growing Generosity”. This program will not only help share with the whole church a clearer picture of what might mean to be a 2030 church but explore together how we can resource this Vision.
The first two imagining hope programs have been instrumental in driving our church forward and we hope that God will bless and guide us through all these 3 stages so that Growing Generosity might also be significant in helping us move towards a 2030 church. We will present information about Growing Generosity at our Annual General Meeting in July and share how you can be a part of this important program.
Vision 2025 Presentation
The beginning of a list of critical questions that TUC might need to ask…
- What are the needs of the local or wider community?
- How does the church (or particularly our church) become the heart of the community without requiring society to reshape itself to the church?
- What can we learn from other churches who are attracting Youth and Young Adults?
- Does anyone go where they’re not invited?
- Would the community miss us if we’re gone?
- What is the make up of the community? (compared to the TUC community/membership)
- Who are we “serving”? What does “serving” mean? What can we do to serve?
- Does every church have to serve every demographic?
- What does a church gathering look like for families?
- What does membership mean?
- How do we communicate broadly beyond church networks especially if existing channels breakdown/are corrupted? What’s our voice?
- What are the needs of Young people in church (18-35)?
- What are the need of Young families in church?
- How do we know if we’re “succeeding”? Why do people come?
- What does “local” mean to us? (and does it matter?)
- What is the future of online ministry?
- How does the TUC community progress on journey to the “future”?
- What does it mean to be a 2030 church?
- How engage with Gospel across cultures? Diversity/multiculturalism
- How do we continue to be open to ongoing change?
- How does the community identify with the name TUC? Does “Uniting Church” mean anything?
- What does the church community do (activities, worship) to connect with the community?
- How do we deepen relationship with families connected thru their kids? (Turratots, TZone, SQ1, playgroup)
- How do we grow a culture of discipleship? How do we understand discipleship?
- How can “teaching and preaching” happen (and be effective)?
- How do newcomers become part of the community?
- How do we have deep personal connections with a smaller group of people?
- What do we expect of members? (their contribution, volunteering, regularity of attendance)
- What is our relationship to what’s going on at Synod and Presbytery? What policies impact us?
- How do we “interact” with other churches in our region? (UCA and others)
- How do we still exist in 20 years?
- What would happen if nothing changes?
- What does the future “facility” need to be?
- How do we resource the plan/strategy?
- What type of resources and are they distinctive?
- What do we understand by giving?
- What does “financial sustainability” look like?