 September, 2011
Time flies, they say, when you are having fun. This year has really flown by for me and when I stop long enough to review all that has happened I am truly excited about what we are doing and the direction that ABC of the Rocky Mountains is headed in its common ministry and mission.
As I look at the past year, I am excited about several things, but especially the clarity that is developing around our common mission, the transformation efforts of our local churches, the evolving missions program of our Region and the training we have been able to provide our leadership, both professional and lay, to help them better do their ministries.
Clarification of our Vision for Ministry
One of the tasks that we (Regional Staff and Officers) have worked hard on this year is to expand and clarify our understanding of what it is God is calling us to do together. We have been working with Dr. Jeff Woods, Associate General Secretary of ABC-USA, as a guide in this discernment process. As you may know, we had previously identified three key ministry areas or foci for our work: Equipping Local Church Leaders, Empowering Churches and Engaging Mission. We understood that these are the key areas God is leading us to do as an association of churches who are committed to doing ministry that is bigger than any one church can do. So with that in mind, we wanted to define more clearly what this would look like for us.
The staff took time to prayerfully work on this, ultimately developing the Vision Statement, found on page 13, for each of the three key areas. These statements are written from the perspective of five years down the road, what should our Regional ministry look like and/or be doing. As a part of developing these statements, they were taken to the Board for their review and were then reworked by staff to their current form. These then were taken back to the Board for their affirmation.
As you can see, these statements offer a very clear and exciting picture of what we hope to be doing as a Region in the coming years. We know that this will require a lot of work both on the part of staff and on the part of the churches and leaders that are ABCRM. We think that this vision statement contains something for each of our congregations to get excited and to invest their time and energy.
Take time to review this statement – knowing that it is a living document that will be amended and appended as God leads.
The Transformation Efforts of our Local Churches
I am also excited to see our local churches working on being who it is that God has called them to be. There have been two key initiatives that we have focused on this year, The Missional Church Learning Community and the work of the Church Transformation Task Force that has been at work in the Region for the last couple of years.
The Missional Church Learning Community was approximately a two year effort that was facilitated by Glynnis LaBarre of American Baptist Home Mission Society (formerly National Ministries) and coordinated in the Region by Rev. Mary Tellis, ABCRM Mission and Ministry Coach. The results of the program have been excellent as it has helped the churches involved to look more into their community and to discover ways in which God may be calling them to serve that community. Mary’s report will contain more information about this vital effort and our hope is that Mary, who has now been trained as a facilitator for this type of community, will be able to organize another learning community in our Region in the coming year.
The Church Transformation Task Force has been learning how to lead church transformation through a simple process of identifying the reality of where you are at now, discovering what it is that God wants you to be and then developing strategies to get from here to there. This year as a way of helping churches discover their current realities, the team helped a number of churches use various assessment instruments. These instruments included Natural Church Development (NCD), Church Health Assessment Tool (CHAT), US Congregational Life Survey and Appreciative Inquiry. Each of these tools return different results but help the congregation to determine where they currently are at. The next step will be to help the churches to engage a discernment process of discovering where God is leading them and to develop plans to get from here to there. I am excited about the work of this team and look forward to seeing their work expand in the Region.
And of course, Region staff has continued to work with our congregations as consultants, coaches and resource people in a number of ways. We have been involved in dispute resolution, pastoral search processes, pulpit supply, celebrating anniversaries and special occasions and many other ways. It has been a good year of working with our member congregations and we are excited about what God is doing in each of them.
Evolving Missions Program
A key component of our common ministry is Missions. Indeed we are an association of churches, a region and a denomination because of missions. So I am excited to see our mission efforts, efforts both to do mission work and support our common ABC mission work, continuing to grow and evolve. There has been a several exciting trends this year in our expanding mission program; new opportunities for mission work in the Region, Disaster Recovery Ministries and Pastoral Mission Experience Opportunities.
Intra-Regional Mission Opportunities - In March of 2010, Dan and Estella Schweissing officially began their work as Regional Missionaries to resettled Refugee Families in the Denver Area on behalf of American Baptists. In addition to Regional support, Dan and Estella have been supported largely by churches and individual contributors to their ministry. Their work has begun to blossom this year with the establishment of an after-school tutoring program for Refugee children and with a three week Vacation Bible School program. Both of these programs offer our churches and members new opportunities to do mission work in our own Region. It was exciting to see workers from Delta, Co.; Laramie, WY; Colorado Springs and Denver come to work with the children of Ebenezer Ethnic Baptist Church. I know the lives of the children and of the workers were all changed as a result of the ministry.
The work also grew this year as conversations were held and a small group of workers were brought from Denver to work in the vegetable and fruit harvest on the Western Slope. We are praying that this type of tertiary resettlement might offer our Burmese brothers and sisters new opportunities and a better life in their new home land. Much work still needs to be done, but your prayers and ongoing support are appreciated.
Disaster Recovery Ministries – This year also saw several teams from the Region get involved in Disaster Recovery Ministries. After Crossroads trip to Haiti to work in Earthquake relief, Rich Schweissing and Karen Van organized a team of volunteers from the Region to return to Haiti in August of this year. The team of seven came back changed, renewed and committed to seeing other teams return to Haiti in the coming months.
In July, I was privileged to take a team of 24 to Joplin to work in Tornado Clean up. We saw destruction like most of us have never seen but also incredible ministry opportunities. From the actual clean-up work to the feeding and housing of volunteers to providing a kind ear for those caught in the midst of disaster, this team discovered many ways to be of assistance during times of crisis. This group came back convinced of the need to form a more permanent team that will respond to disasters and initial discussions are underway about how best to do that.
Pastoral Mission Initiative – It has been a dream of mine for some time to find ways to get our pastors onto the mission field in a cross-cultural ministry setting. I have found that these experiences have changed me and how I look at and do ministry. But I was never able to go as a local pastor… too many responsibilities, tight budgets and a lack of encouragement and or opportunities all prohibited my getting to do this until after I joined the Regional staff. But we are changing that reality in the Rocky Mountain Region!
This year we sponsored one mission trip geared exclusively to taking ministers to encounter new mission fields in a cross-cultural experience. This trip took seven pastors to Chiapas to work alongside ABC Missionaries Chuck Shawver and Riccardo and Doris Mayol. The pastors experienced life in a small village where a church is struggling with the issues of a cloistered community having the outside world impact it in significant ways and they had the opportunity to spend time with and to share their expertise with young seminarians who will be going back to these villages to help them cope with these issues.
A significant tool to help us accomplish these trips was the Church of the Master Pastoral Scholarship funds. These funds allowed us to provide scholarships for our pastors to keep the cost of the trips at a minimum level, affordable for both the church and the pastor. It also allowed individual pastors to craft their own continuing education programs in years to come. We are blessed with these funds that provide about $10,000 a year for the next 4 to five years before these funds run out. What a wonderful gift from the Church of the Master as it chose to close with dignity and to bless future generations. One of the challenges that will lie ahead is finding a way to supplant these significant gifts for the future ministry of our Region.
Leadership Training
The last year has also been a great year for leadership training in our region, both for lay and professional church leaders. Of course the Missional church emphasis and involvement in mission trips all have training components in them, but in addition to this we offered at least two other significant training events and cooperated in providing other events.
One of the training events we offered was Lombard Mennonite Peace Center’s five day training on Mediation Skills. This workshop provided the approximate 25 participants significant training and practice in understanding the nature of conflict, the physiological and psychological effects if conflict and a Biblical model and methodology for transforming conflict from it destructive potential to an opportunity for growth and new opportunities. Participants were challenged and moved by the experience and have been trying to find ways to share their learnings in multiple-ways, including leading the Pre-gathering Continuing Education Event for this year’s Gathering.
Another event was the Willow Creek Leadership Summit in which we provided church leaders with reduced cost tickets to participate in the international leadership training and conference. We were inspired by powerful speakers and leaders and learned new tools to help us all better accomplish our task of leading others in our joint pursuit of following Jesus.
And we also partnered with Ministers Council to provide a Pastoral Retreat in which about 20 of our pastors and professional church leaders participated, with Calvary Baptist in providing a significant workshop on the “End of Life” led by nationally known leaders, and with Crossroads American Baptist and FBC-Grand Junction in bringing ABC-Missionary, Walt White, to the Region to teach us about the Islamic Faith and working with their followers. We also continued to provide the excellent retreat and camping programs for which the Region has become known. Many thanks to the camp leadership teams, SoulJourners Committee, Regional Youth Team and others who enabled these events to take place.
So you can see our Region has been busy trying to live out our calling to “Equip Leaders, Empower Churches and Engage in Mission”. But I also owe you an accounting for my time. So let me share a bit about that…
This year seems to have been a year of “giving back” on my part as I have had the opportunity to do lots of teaching, to be involved in planning and leading multiple mission opportunities and to engage in Denominational conversations and to represent you at this year’s Biennial Convention and other meetings.
As far as teaching opportunities, I participated with five other Executive Ministers in providing lectures for an on-line ABC History and Polity Class developed by Bacone College. I was also able to teach a spring term History and Polity Class at Iliff Seminary for five ABC Students and had the opportunity to spend a week at American Baptist Seminary of the West teaching a “mini” course on “Preaching in the Local Church Context”. I also facilitated the “Ministerial Ethics Course” that Dr. Joe Kutter taught for our Ministerial Leadership Academy.
I helped plan and lead with Rev. John Turnage, chair of the ABCRM Mission Team, the Pastoral Mission Trip to Chiapas, Mexico and planned and led the mission team that traveled to Joplin. I also worked with Dr. Reid Truelson, Executive Director of International Ministries, to organize a cooperative venture that will take four of our pastors and four pastors form ABC of Nebraska to Myanmar to learn more about the continuing ministry in the land of our first missionary work. That group will be traveling to “Burma” the first two weeks of November.
And I continue to offer my services as do all of your staff to pastors and local congregations in number of areas including pulpit supply, consultation about numerous areas of church concern and pastoral support. Indeed this is the bulk of our ministry but it is difficult to quantify the work that is done here – from counseling pastors who are seeking new positions (usually from other Regions wanting to move to our beautiful Region) to helping churches discover better ways to administrate their congregation, we try to provide what expertise we have and to find resources to address those areas where we lack the expertise to deal with the issues that arise in 84 disparate congregations. But it is a great joy and our highest priority to serve the local church.
Finally, I continue to serve on two ABC affiliated seminary boards and on the board of American Baptist Homes and to work with various denominational committees to which I have been assigned in my role as your Executive Minister.
While we have accomplished much in this last year together, there is still more to do and many challenges that lie ahead. I am confident that by God’s grace, our common commitment to work together to fulfill God’s calling in our lives and the collective wisdom of your Board and staff, that we will see these things accomplished in ways that we cannot think or imagine in the years to come.
In Him
Rev. Steven C. Van Ostran, D. Min.
Executive Minister
2010 Executive Minister Report
2009 Executive Minsiter Report
2008 Executive Minister Report
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