Postkiwi

Tonight we debated the implementation for the Queensland Synod’s Vision for Mission. It’s fascinating to see the response to the document.

There’s Tim Trudgeon’s concern about our language describing perameters and processes for distribution of funding and resources? He’s responding to the implementation plan in which the mission resource consultant and team will be engaging with missional communities to discern the appropriateness of support.

Tim asks if we should be using the hard language of “performance indicators and timeframes, key milestones and or review dates, evaluation processes and timelines to be utilised including outlining the responsibilities of the various partners in data collection”. He pushes for the development of language which reflects a new paradigm of missional community.

I must admit the evaluation section is more structured than I would have made it if I’d written it by myself. But we do need to offer ways in which communities can honestly assess how they’re going. This is an interesting tension between energising language of broad vision on the one hand, and on the other hand the exact criteria by which two million dollars of resources might be shared.

Here I would explore the seven S framework. Strategy, shared values, structure, systems, staff, skills and styles. How do we ensure that all of these line up in the implementation of the Vision for Mission?

Another issue raised was the concern that the Synod might be venturing into thinking it could save the world through action. It’s a classic Calvinist suspicion of missional pragmatism. Be careful! We might actually do something!

Bottom line though is that the church does need to engage in a robust missional theology that is connected with practical outcomes. As Geoff Thompson, systematic theologian, reminds us, we need to be grounding our funding and resourcing in assumptions that are deeply rooted in a Biblically-based understanding of Christ and the gospel community.