The Ministry Empowerment Team

By Kathy Vaselkiv

In mid-January, a new ministry team was formed at Central, called the Ministry Empowerment Team (MET). This update will introduce you to this team and its purpose, as well as inform you of issues we are dealing with currently.

• What does MET do? Plans, manages and oversees ministry at Central

• Why? To help Central live out its mission, core values and philosophy of ministry

• By what authority? Supported by and held accountable to Session

  Who? Pastoral and program staff (George Antonakos, Jerry Cooper, Rhonda Herman, Alida Oosthuizen, Bill Pitts, Andy Gathman, Janice Chubski) and two lay ministers (Al Finch and Kathy Vaselkiv)

• Scope? Everything from coordination of church calendar and use of facilities to ongoing nurture and accountability of new and existing ministry teams

Since this is a new team at Central, we have concentrated a great deal of effort in becoming a cohesive group - praying, studying, and listening together. We are seeking to model community and team-based ministry as outlined in Central's Philosophy of Ministry.

Our work has resulted in accomplishments, but often the tasks undertaken have led to different outcomes than originally intended. We trust this has been the result of the Lord's plans being far wiser than our own agenda! Some of these items include:

• Created a master list of Central ministries and assigned a MET liaison to each one
• Guided several members of the congregation in exploring new ministry teams
• Designed a simple Team Covenant Form with instructions to help existing ministry teams clarify their own mission, vision and key goals. (We will be distributing this form to many ministries over the next several weeks.)
• Identified intermediate-term space requirements for growing ministries at Central and proposed a solution to Session.

Perhaps the most significant challenge will be to determine who will be called and gifted to serve on the MET in the future. The willingness of our program staff to shoulder the additional responsibility of serving on the MET during this interim period has been crucial to helping us discern God's unique purposes for Central. Over time, however, we need to free our program staff from their MET responsibilities and add lay ministers to the MET who have a passion for coordinating and empowering ministry teams at Central. In the meantime, the MET will be working with Session to help fill the gaps between the departure of George and Jerry and the arrival of new pastoral staff.

We ask for your encouragement and prayers as we seek to fulfill our part in Central's mission to move people toward Christ by being a community of faith which loves, encourages and equips them in Christ, sending them out to serve!

See also NV-1/27: The Ministry Empowerment Team, NV-1/27: Central's New Ministry Structure: Frequently Asked Questions.