A core part of the vision for our parish is to become a centre for mission within the Anglican Church. As a church, we are particularly blessed for this work. Between the long legacy of the Missionary Services League and the generosity of that organisation to the New Zealand Church Missionary Society and active missionaries, alongside our commitment to mission international through generous grants, we already have the capacity to leverage more effectively for the kingdom of God in New Zealand and around the world.
One of the challenges for mission in the modern world, however, is that it has become depersonalized. Via charitable giving, we write cheques for mission work, but rarely see, hear or experience the transformation it brings. As such, we have been working on a project to shift that ground by directing our investment and mission funding to community and personal transformation projects.
Utilizing both our levied mission contribution and the earnings from the Missionary Services League fund, we have approximately $18,000 a year to spend on effective mission. This year, we are proposing initiating long term projects in two directions.
Mission to the Pacific:
In the first instance, we wish to set aside approximately $10,000 of our mission budget to support the Fijian Anglican Community in Newtown and Nadawa, suburbs of Suva. This is an active church communities that faces both persecution and significant barriers in education and poverty that our contribution may help to alleviate. Longer term, we would also like to have this as a place our young people can visit to experience faith in a different cultural location, and in turn welcome their young people to experience that church in our context. The funding would likely be directed to practical projects such as water and infrastructure for these communities, but a portion would also go towards supported the ordained ministry int he community.
Personal Transformation
Alongside this community impact and relationship, we want to help our community experience the individual impact of mission on the lives of those we support. As such, we are proposing a partnership with World Vision in which the church subsidize a number of sponsor relationships, allowing members to build a relationship via letters and gifts to a community and particular child, likely in Indonesia. Our aspiration with this would be that some fully sponsor and offers partially sponsor, to help stretch our budget for this even further. The church would carry the financial responsibility for the support, with the portion from the congregation being donated as 'mission giving' and thus tax deductible.
While this has been discussed widely, we want to hear your voice as it will be a long term personal, community and financial committment on our church's behalf to projects that will last decades. The Vestry believes this is an important commitment to make to truly see the impact of mission, but we need your voice to!
Please complete the brief survey below so that we can collate the voices of the church and hear the general spirt of our community for such projects.
