April 2010

PASTORS E-NEWSLETTER

APRIL 2010

Hi fellow Pastors!

This is the first of a regular E-Newsletter that the MSD Ministry Team will send out to you each month as an additional measure to keep in touch with you on a regular basis.

‘MSD is committed to establishing and facilitating the development of healthy, sustainable, missional ministries within and through the Baptist Churches of NSW and ACT. The MSD Ministry Team undertakes the role of resourcing, serving, supporting and partnering the churches and pastors of the Denomination in this endeavour.’ This newsletter is one way in seeking to support you as a pastor.

CHANGES IN MSD OFFICE

It is a pleasure to introduce my new PA, Roslyn Allibone who joined our wider team last week. Ros currently attends Ryde Baptist and brings a wealth of experience, including 7 years as the PA for the Anglican Bishop of North Sydney. Some of you may know Ros from her days with CYTA (Christian Youth Travel Association). Please introduce yourself to Ros whenever you are around the office or at any of our functions. Please be patient as she learns all about our systems and processes. Ros can be contacted on 9886 9230 or adminmsd@baptistnsw.asn.au.

The team would also like to express our appreciation to Danelle McLeay for assisting us in the office for the month in which I had no PA. We needed someone who was familiar with the Committee for the Ministry processes, etc, especially during a period of time that team members were away on retreat and visiting regional areas.

MARRIAGE CELEBRANTS

Quite a few of you have already attended one of the Marriage Celebrants Refresher Courses that we have run over the past couple of years. The Federal Government requires that all marriage celebrants be kept abreast of the Marriage Act and any ongoing changes. We were given five years to implement ongoing professional training in this area. Each year we are required to indicate to Births Death and Marriages that all celebrants are currently in ministry and have received adequate training and updates to the relevant acts. We have been running a few such workshops for numerous years and last year MSD conducted 6 such workshops plus another seven have been organized for 2010 [visit www.msd.org.au/resources for details.]  We have endeavoured to provide these in both regional areas and throughout the metropolitan area.

If you have not attended a refresher course within the past three years, let us encourage you to follow this up within the next 12 months. While we will conduct further sessions next year, some celebrants may not be able to retain their registration if they haven’t met the government’s specifications. This is due to many changes to the Marriage Act and Passport Act as a result of the government’s greater scrutiny on national security and personal identity.

PASTORAL REVIEWS

The MSD team believes undertaking Pastoral Reviews can be a very positive experience as part of one’s professional development, so long as it is conducted as part of a healthy process. However, it can be a very negative experience if conducted by the church leadership because they are unhappy with some aspects of your ministry.

Our recommendation is that pastors ought to consider being proactive in this area and consider having a review every second year. [The MSD team members all undertake reviews on a biennial basis.] The process is primarily to provide feedback to the pastor to both affirm areas of ministry and identify areas for further development. We would generally recommend the review be facilitated by someone from outside of the local church community.

MSD has developed a confidential online process for reviews that do not take long to complete. While MSD team members are available to assist with any reviews, we can also point you to other pastors/consultants who could facilitate reviews for you. Viv Grice, vgrice@baptistnsw.asn.au, would be happy to assist you in establishing a healthy review process.

COVENANT OF CARE

Another recent initiate by the MSD team has been the development of a Covenant of Care for Pastors and Congregations primarily for when a congregation calls a new pastor. [A template can be found at www.msd.org.au/resources.]  This is an attempt to raise awareness within congregations of the level of commitment and care they also need to exercise towards pastors at a time when pastors make a similar commitment to the congregation at their induction.

Pastors and churches might also consider entering into a similar covenant on such occasions as an anniversary, when committing to a new vision and strategic plan or after a pastoral review.

PLANNING FOR RETIREMENT

While retirement may be some time off for us, we are aware that for many of our ‘baby boomer’ pastors’ retirement is looming closer and questions are being raised about their preparation for this. In future newsletters we will discuss other aspects for pastors retiring. However, a short article by Peter Murphy from Christian Super encouraging pastors to consider how they might be preparing financially for future retirement can be found at www.msd.org.au/resources

We are also in discussions with Christian Super about sponsoring a seminar later this year on financial planning for pastors.

FUTURE NEWSLETTERS

There are numerous topics that we plan to cover in future newsletters. MSD is also currently working on a number of policy guidelines in the areas of sabbaticals, professional standards, and housing standards for pastors. We will keep you informed. Further, our plan is to alert you to other resources, etc that we find which may be useful for pastors.

Each of the newsletters will also be archived so that you can go back and re-read previous editions.

If there are any areas you would like us to cover or to update you about, please let us know. However, it is not our intention to duplicate resources that may be found elsewhere.

DATABASE

To enable us to keep you informed, MSD are trying to ensure that we have our own up-to-date email database of all pastors, including those who may not currently be in church-based ministries and those who are retired. If you are aware of anyone who didn’t receive this newsletter, let us know and we will update our records.

If you would prefer not to receive this newsletter on a regular basis, then please let us know and we will take you off the mailing list.

May you be richly blessed in your own ministry service and be a blessing to others

Ken Clendinning

Director of MSD
kclendinning@baptistnsw.asn.au

E-News Archives
Pastors E-News April 10