Mission Action Plan
Mission Consultancy Exercise
One of our Elders, Bill Cairney, is the Baptist Union of Scotland’s Mission Networker for Lanarkshire. Guided by Bill and Rev Neil McCullins we undertook a consultancy exercise in My 2005. The aim of this was simple but profound:
– “A partnership between church and consultants in discerning the call of God to Westwood Baptist Church in their local community at this particular time, and in taking steps forward in that mission.”
During this exercise the Church learned a lot about those areas of church life that needed to be improved to make our mission more effective. Following completion of the consultancy the church set out to develop an Action Plan to help that to happen. This was agreed by the church in 2006 and now is a key influence on our future activities.
Over the last year God has blessed the church with an increased number of baptisms resulting in new members. This is most encouraging and a bit of momentum has built up which looks to God for greater blessing. We sense that the church stands at a crucial time in its life. If it is able to sense which way the Spirit of God is blowing and set sail in that direction then we firmly believe that it could prove to be the time for significant and sustained growth.
This is surely what God would want to see happen, it is also clearly the desire of the membership as reflected in the gathered views from the Consultancy exercise. What is required now is bold action, guided by the leadership but involving every person in the church. Only such concerted, combined action can achieve God’s longings for this church – the winning of many for Christ and their growth into mature and committed Christians.
Implementation
The top 6 Mission Issues that the gathered church recognised during the Consultancy and which have been incorporated in to our Mission Action Plan are
- A Family Focused Church
- Greater Community Involvement
- Better Discipleship training
- A Clear Vision resulting from Prayer
- Be an Attractive Church
- Focused Evangelism
We are firmly committed to make progress on these aims and this will surely lead to God’s blessing on the Church.