We believe God is calling us to do this by:-
1. Releasing Inwards/Outwards Communities
2. Re-discovering Reality and Relevance
3. Restoring our Gathered Church Identity
4. Renewing Mutual Discipleship
5. Refreshing our Openness to the Spirit
1. Releasing Inwards/Outwards communitites
We will release and support people to form communities that grow disciples who make disciples. We want to help each community to find appropriate ways of developing into Christian maturity and reaching out in mission. This means that our structures will become much more flexible, as we support different kinds of expressions of this inwards/outwards principle.
In five years’ time we will have a growing number of more varied communities that are doing mission and growing in maturity. Though they will be diverse in their expression, they will be united as one church with shared purpose and values and with leaders who are glad to be accountable to and supported by the leadership of St Barnabas. – 2 Corinthians 6.1-2
2. Re-discovering Reality and Relevance
We want to be a church that does away with ‘the compartmentalised life’ and that helps people to live their life with God in an effective and integrated way in the whole of life.
In five years’ time, we will have a firmer grasp on how to follow
Jesus in consumer culture and will be better able to communicate our faith in the realities of everyday life – Romans 12.1-2
3. Restoring our Gathered Church Identity
We want to restore our confidence in the life of our gathered church community as we re-discover our whole-church identity as the St. Barnabas Church Family, expressed through Sunday services and church-wide memory-making events.
In five years’ time, we will be a church with a strong gathered as well as dispersed identity where we all contribute to and receive from the worship, teaching, fellowship and care that happens when we gather together. There will be an effective understanding of the relationship between what we do together and what we do apart. What we do together will model discipleship and mission and will strengthen and inspire us for what we do in our dispersed life – Acts 2.42-47
4. Renewing Mutual Discipleship
We want to become a church that develops its members in their willingness, confidence and ability to disciple one another
effectively and lovingly.
In five years’ time we will naturally be in relationships where we can both help others and be helped to follow Jesus. We will have grown in wisdom and knowledge, developing the humility that we need in order to learn from one another and from God – Colossians 3.12-17, James 3.13-18
5. Refreshing our Openness to the Spirit
We want to become a church that is learning how to be open to and experience the presence of God – without avoiding the doubts and the mystery: a church that has faith in the power of God to be at work in our everyday lives and therefore has the courage to take risks of radical, adventurous faith.
In five years’ time, we will be a church that is well grounded in the gifts of the Spirit and that has a humble familiarity with the presence and power of God when we meet together and throughout our everyday lives – 1 Corinthians 14v24-26
We want to re-shape our buildings afresh to the present and future mission and ministry of St Barnabas Church. As a gathered church with a local outreach, we need our buildings to communicate a welcoming, attractive, ‘open for business’ presence to our local community on Mill Rd, as well as providing flexible positive spaces for our gathered congregational life, expressed through small, mid, and large-sized gatherings of all ages and stages of life.
In five year’s time, our buildings will express that we are a church that cares for our community and cares for our people. They will aid us, rather than hinder us, in reaching our goals of Growing through Mission and Growing into Maturity, releasing us to do fresh forms of ministry and mission that are currently beyond us. Ecclesiastes 3.1-3.
