Summary of Celebration and Vision Meeting
About 125 people enjoyed a great time together Sunday afternoon (June 1st) as we celebrated together God's goodness over this past ministry season and as we talked about God's vision for our future.
If you were not able to make this meeting here is a synopsis of what was discussed.
Steve and some members from his worship team kicked off our get-together by leading us in a time or worship and then we were blessed by a testimony from Curtis and Shannon Butler as they shared what God has been doing in their lives through Harvest and specifically through their small group. What a joy to hear of God’s transforming work – thanks Shannon and Curtis for sharing with us!
Leo gave an overview of (click here to see his PowerPoint slides):
- Our staff and what their core roles are with the church. We continue to thank God for a great staff who are skilled in their roles and who work so hard serving Christ and us.
- He also presented a brief summary of our 2008 financial budget showing the general breakdown of the resources God has entrusted to us.
- Finally, he presented some of the findings of a leadership survey competed for the Elders by Lee Talbot. This was an intensive survey of about 20 of our senior leadership people covering all areas of our ministry seeking to ask which areas are working well and which need some attention. The results of this survey, although not a surprise to us did affirm the direction we were headed in many ministry areas.
This was followed by Norm speaking to three vision or future related areas:
- The senior leadership of our youth ministry. A significant assessment of our youth ministry was done this winter and we affirmed that we have a solid philosophy for our youth ministry which we believe we need to stay the course on (click here to see a synopsis of this philosophy).
We also affirmed that we have a good group of volunteers in this area and are thankful to God for their service and desire to add to their numbers as our youth group is growing (238% growth since January!!!).
The Elders have determined that due to the need for consistency and maturity in our leaders we do not sense God’s leading us to hire in a youth pastor in the near future. Rather we have sensed His leading that we should fill our senior leadership need as follows (effective immediately): - Remove some administrative roles (setup teams and school liaison) from Steve Toombs and ask him to devote 10 hours per week providing his expertise and experience in youth ministry to high level leadership of this area. Steve is capable of this level of leadership and this move will not hurt the quality or direction of our worship ministry.
- Hire Dan Anderson on full-time asking him to commit 15 hours a week to senior level leadership in our youth ministry as well. Dan and Steve will work side-by-side with Dan bringing his proven skill and expertise for small groups, assimilation and planning to the table. These two senior leaders, we believe, will provide excellent direction for this ministry and they both already are very familiar with the ministry, the students and the leader.
- We need to recruit additional leaders to supplement our current team. We likely need 4-6 mature leaders. Steve and Dan will be reallocating roles in the youth ministry implementing some leaders as small group shepherds, some as small group apprentices, and some as specialty leaders such as planning, running mixer games, planning special events, follow up and assimilation of students, etc.
- We firmly believe that this approach is the best way to serve our families and students well and to grow our ministry providing consistency and leadership for the long haul.
- Norm also announced that effective June 1st, Leo Klus would transition his role from being 75% of his time with Harvest London as Senior Associate Staff member (and 25% of this time serving with Harvest Fellowship) to 100% working for Harvest Fellowship.
Leo came to work with us last April so he has completed one year. Harvest Fellowship hired Leo on paying 90% of his cost and we picked up 10%. Not a bad deal! We are very grateful to the Harvest Fellowship for their investment in Leo and his family and in Harvest London in this manner. Leo has been a significant blessing to our Elders, staff and church through his leadership, preaching and expertise in so many areas. A large part of what God has done among us over this past year can be traced back to Leo’s involvement in our ministry so we thank God for him and thank him, Kim and his family for this.
The good news for Harvest London is that Leo and Kim will be staying in London at Harvest and Leo has been asked to stay on as an Elder and has also been asked to continue preaching with us. He will average about one sermon a month for the next year or two. Please pray for Leo as he moves into this significant role of providing senior leadership to new church plants in Canada and some in the US as well as helping transition churches and existing Harvest churches. We believe God will richly bless many churches through this gifted and godly servant.
- Finally, Norm presented the fact that the Elders are sensing God’s leading to get the idea of a permanent facility for Harvest London back on the table. We had pulled this idea off the table during our transition time but we believe we now need to begin a careful and steady process of determining God’s leading in terms of a home for us. (click here to see some pictures showing general ideas ... note large download):
We sought to communicate three key ideas at this meeting. First, we sense God’s leading to look for a facility that is more warehouse than traditional church building. We believe with some creativity and hard work by our volunteers we can make a warehouse shell look and feel wonderful for church but we wanted all to understand that our current direction is to either build or buy/renovate (all depends on God’s open doors) a structure which is more or less a shell with rooms and areas inside rather than the traditional church building.
Second, we wanted our people to know that the current estimate for the cost of this approach based on the size of building we need (somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 square feet) is around $3,000,000. Of course this can change based on the market but we wanted people to understand that significant fund raising will be required as we likely need at least half of this in cash. But we also wanted our people to know that we are not talking about $7 - $10 million which a traditional building of similar size and function might cost.
Finally, we wanted everyone to know that this is not a short term process. We are anticipating we will likely be looking at 2-5 years before we might see a move. In all of this (resources and timing) we desire to seek God’s leading and not run ahead of Him. We will move forward as God provides the direction, the resources and the green light. We will be forming a team to begin gathering expertise on the facility side as well as one on the finance side but will only move as God leads. So please pray with us that God would provide and that we will be patient but also faithful to step out in trust as He opens doors.
We closed the meeting with about 30 minutes of Q&A led by Leo and Norm as well as a brief vision reminder by Norm.