In this new year of 2014, there will be several new efforts or changes in our church. I would like to share some of them with you. The Parenting Bible Classes for Infant/Kindergarten and Elementary Age will disappear and instead will be replaced by Parenting Seminars from the spring quarter. There are many who do not have a chance to attend Parenting bible classes due to their short term nature with us, or some members missed taking the Parenting bible classes in time to be helpful after taking other requisite classes. To help with this situation, we decided to change to the seminar format that will be required for all members and this will start this year.
Our church has a slogan about being responsible for our children and we are trying in many ways to accomplish this. But the most important people in this effort are the parents themselves. We will share the know-how of the parenting skills with these training sessions. And we will not just stop with taking the seminar but to provide opportunities to practice what we learned in the seminar. Both fathers and mothers must attend the seminars and may become required conditions for their children’s participation in extra-curricular activities such as VBS or Special Activities classes. Since there is a specific feature to Teenage Parenting Bible classes, we will continue with these classes.
Second, as I discussed during the last Parent meeting, there will be many changes to the Youth ministry. We will continue with House Churches for Youth, but to strengthen the care from adult, we will expand the number of Zone leaders and spend more energy in training them. We experienced some issues with Youth life course and will put more efforts to stabilize and expand these classes. We will continue to look for other ways including setting up groups for teenage parents to help each other.
Thirdly, we will prepare to go in a different direction for the church finances. Until now, our church setup budgets were based on the need of each ministry first then used the left over funds to plan for helping others. The result of this is that we tend to be generous toward ourselves. Starting with 2015 budget, instead of using the funds for ourselves first then using the rest for others, we will decide on the level of support for others at the same time we setup the budgets for our ministries. We expect to tighten our belts and become a church that shares more generously.
So with this in mind, we will setup a research team in the middle of the year. We will discuss in what areas our church will be sharing in detail and instead of leaning to only one area, we will try for a balance between foreign missions, domestic missions, benevolent ministry, and support for community organizations following biblical practices. There are other changes being thought about, but I will share them later with you
We have to continue to strive to develop our church to follow God’s will, and I hope our efforts will be a chance to doing better. We have to ceaselessly pray on this and when we hear God’s voice in answer, we should not be afraid to change in obedience to Him.
No Comments to "New Changes to Come in 2014"
