General Board of Global Ministries
UM Information
UM
Reporter
Florida Southern College
Bethune
Cookman College
FL UM Children's Home
 |
|
CHURCH DEVELOPMENT Discovering Church For The 21st Century By Dr. Montfort C. Duncan Jr.
Executive Director of Church Development
As Charles Courtoy mentioned in his
article for the June 8 edition of the Florida United Methodist Review, the Florida Annual
Conference leads the connection in the United States in the number of new church starts
since 1995. His leadership and expertise in helping each of our 14 districts move in a new
direction of church planting is recognized across the United Methodist Church. This
conference owes him a huge debt of gratitude for seeing the vision and leading the way for
us.
It is with a sense of deep appreciation for Charles’ insight and leadership that I will try to continue what he has started in Florida. Because of Jesus’ command to make disciples of all people, we take seriously our responsibility to begin new communities of faith across the conference. We will be using various national ethnic plans to launch new ethnic faith communities across Florida. Because we want to be an inclusive church, we will continue to work with all ethnic groups to enlarge our missional outreach.
To continue to be intentional and effective about starting new congregations and missions in the conference, we must discover what it means to be the church for the 21st century. Some approaches will need to be tweaked, others will need to be changed, and yet others will need to be discarded. It is an amazing thing that God uses people like us to begin new works of faith, to reach others with the Good News of God’s love and forgiveness. With that privilege comes the responsibility of being accountable and faithful.
I would suggest there are five starting points to discovering the 21st century church as we prepare to reach out and start new communities of faith: 1). breaking with the past, 2). leading through transition, 3). hearing the gospel again, 4). shaping a new community, and 5). practicing missional community (Percept Leadership Development Resources). I will be addressing each of these in the next issue of the Florida United Methodist Review.
Top
of this page