Scrabo Presbyterian

Church

Mission Plan
2010
ntroduction:

Scrabo Presbyterian Church has been in existence since 1972 and began as an initiative under Dr
Eagleson of Strean Presbytertain church. It is situated in the middle of West Winds housing estate on
the outskirts of Newtownards and its parish area includes Scrabo housing estate and two private
developments, namely, Landsdowne and Cambourne. The combined housing stock is somewhere in
the region of 3500 homes. Under the indices of multiple deprivation West Winds would be
recognised as socially disadvantaged at the various levels and would traditionally attract funding
and statutory intervention. The Scrabo housing estate by virtue of being located in a different Ward
would not be regarded as disadvantaged to the same degree, yet does come under the category of
being at risk. Landsdowne and Cambourne are private estates and would not be considered to suffer
the same social and economic risks although perhaps experiencing a different set of problems.

The ministry in Scrabo Presbyterian Church has been varied and effective throughout its existence.
It has to this present point been served by 4 ministers and in its earlier years by Deaconesses. Each
minister has brought to it certain gifts and emphases that have helped build it to its current position.
The last congregational census taken by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in 2002 revealed that
Scrabo is a relatively young congregation,

When this paper was written the average attendance on Sunday morning is 143 and in the evening
40 . Whilst these figures are encouraging and have marked a significant increase in attendance over
the last 10 years we are not complacent realising the great need within our community and the
desire to have God’s Kingdom extended.

Creating a mission plan is not new to Scrabo for almost a decade we have been constantly
considering ways to make Christ known to the community and indeed to members of the
congregation. Our journey has already been documented in connection with 'Wholistic Mission' and
reaching the unchurched. In order not to duplicate or labour what has become an integral part of our
vision within Scrabo Presbyterian we have included two appendixes outlining our development and
strategy for involvement. What we seek to do in the rest of this document is outline to you our core
values and vision for the future. Like all mission plans we will highlight what we think a mission
church should look like and how we would then seek to become such a church. In this process we
will also refer to the obstacles we face and the challenges that still lie ahead.

The two documents included in this paper are brief outlines of our journey thus far but at the core of
this vision to serve Christ in the heart of the community was a document written by us
approximately 7 years ago. We put together 10 core values that sum up for the leadership and
hopefully for the congregation what motivates us in mission and ministry within our church. We
have on two separate occasions preached on these values to remind and inspire the congregation to
follow their principles. Those 10 core values are:

1. People matter to God and us. (Luke ch 15)

2. The Gospel message transforms people’s lives. (2nd Corinthians 5:17)
 3. Ministry and evangelism must be carried out in a relevant way. (1st Corinthians
9:21)
4. People need to belong to a caring community. (1st Thessalonians 4:9-10)
5. Every Christian has a God given ministry. (Ephesians 4:12)
6. Everything we do for Christ must be done with excellence. (Colossians 3:23-24)
7. Our church must have an evangelistic impact on our community and develop a heart
for mission. (1st Thessalonians 1:8)
8. To establish our mission we must be willing to step out in visionary faith and take
risks for God. (Hebrews 11:6)
9. Worship reflects biblical truth in a creative, spirit filled and contemporary way. (John
4:23)
10. The goal of our ministry is to transform people into fully devoted followers of Christ.
(Ephesians 4:11-16)

As you can appreciate core values 7 and 8 have a particular emphasis upon mission and mission
planning and these have been the bedrock of all that we have sought to do. The core values are and
were not intended to be an exhaustive list of what is important to us but an attempt to clarify the
components necessary to have a biblical vision for the church. We then sought to develop in 200-
300 words what our vision for the church should be and in 2002 we summarised it to be the
following;

To develop teaching programmes that produce discipleship and commitment. Create

spiritual climate where people value and participate in prayer, fellowship and learning. To
encourage the development of ‘small groups’ that may facilitate the expression of our core
values. Have a varied and diverse music programme reflecting both contemporary and
traditional music. Provide opportunities to enhance worship through vocal and instrumental
accompaniment. Facilitate the use of the ‘arts’ in communicating the Christian faith. To
make better use of technology. To train people for leadership whilst reducing the number of
activities they are involved in. Promote biblical stewardship and move towards an all
member ministry where individuals discover and utilise their spiritual gifts. Build a church
community where all age groups are valued both in their decision making and contribution
to worship. To promote all age worship as an evangelistic tool to reach the lost. To develop a
strategy for social action that will help alleviate the greatest needs of our community, not
forgetting our mandate for global mission. To embrace change and take risks to live by our
values and principles. To ensure greater communication between all office bearers and
voluntary staff. To numerically outgrow our present building.

Eight years on these statements still impact upon our thinking and motivation for mission. As you
will understand from the book on 'Wholistic Mission' it is very difficult for us to separate what we
do from what we are and also demarcate between what is often portrayed as spiritual work and
social work. It is our understanding that the closer we get to Christ the closer we also get to our
community and the more we are able to make Christ known to them. It is also our belief that it is
important to get the internal elements of our church right before our external activities will have any
impact on our community.

Upon reflection, too much time in church life is spent on changing the structures believing that this
will change people. It is our experience that transforming people will lead to a desire to transform
communities and create the capacity to do it. That is why in the development of our mission plan
we place and will continue to place tremendous importance on our core values and vision statement.

For the purpose of clarity in this phase of our mission development we will seek to divide the
subject area up into three categories. 1. How we sought to implement our core values and vision
statement historically. 2. Of recent what methods have we employed to further develop our mission?
3. What are our future plans for the mission of our church?

Historical implementation:

The first and most significant change was to introduce all age worship back in 2002. The
development of this is outlined in appendices 1. The second component was to make sure that the
minister had sufficient time to integrate into the community, thus after a period of district visitation,
strategic visitation became the norm. It was recognised to be involved in community development
that more time had to be spent in the community, understanding how it works and the key figures or
gate keepers of community change. It was obvious that visitation needed to be more strategic within
the terms of the members of the congregation focusing where the greatest need was rather than
simply maintaining loose church affiliations. Whilst this has had some negative impact on the
church in that occasionally visits that should have been done were omitted, it is clear, that the
church has benefited from closer ties being created with the community. This has worked at a
number of levels. The general attitude towards the church within the community has been extremely
positive. We are given the opportunity to engage in matters of how the community functions in
ways that we were not privileged to in the past. We understand the greatest needs of the community
because we are involved in trying to resolve them at every level. The type of work we engage in can
be seen in appendices 2.

In the early part of our mission we decided that preaching and worship needed to be reviewed in
order to be more effective. We became less concerned about the formalities of worship and more
focused on the experience of worship. Did what we were singing and the way that it was sung
reflect how we felt? We did not have a choir and decided to introduce a praise group to lead the
worship each week. The focus of this was to be spirit filled, creative and contemporary. However,
this was only truly effective if what was preached was done so in a way that could be understood,
practical and motivated people to embrace biblical transformation. The breaking of traditional ties
without becoming flippant, the desire to be relevant, to accept a level of noise and disruption from
children and to embrace a more interactive style of worship and preaching, did enhance our capacity
to reach out to the unchurched in mission. We felt that a complete refurbishment of the inside of the
church to facilitate a better visual and auditory experience was necessary. Thus we changed the
internal design of the church to facilitate greater interaction with the congregation by removing the
pulpit and increasing the stage floor space to facilitate the puppet team, praise band and vocal
group. To improve the vision we put in four LCD flat screens and a DVD recording system. The
DVD recordings are then sent to members of the congregation who could benefit from seeing and
listening to the Sunday services. Whilst numbers can and often are a misleading indication of
effectiveness, our congregation went through a period of statistical growth. So much so that one of
our desires was to be financially independent from central funds and thankfully by God’s grace that
became possible.
Present Mission Status:

Our original plan required us to develop a strategy for social action. Of recent we have introduced
the Mustard Seed project. We became acutely aware that many within our communities suffer the
debilitating effects of domestic violence. Often women have to leave the home without the basic
provisions both for herself and family as a consequence many of the aid agencies are under
resourced to provide basic provisions for them and their children. Scrabo has teamed up with
Women’s Aid to provide basic essentials so that both the women and child can be helped through
the worst of their family crisis. These provisions are often toiletries and if she has family, children’s
clothes, nappies and age relevant aids.

On a monthly basis at our all age service we collect these items along with long life shelf food to
aid to those facing social/economic deprivation. Such deprivation often results through poor self
management, but often affects the lives of young children. We make sure that we can provide
enough help to last a family for a few days until other provisions can be put in place. The
coordinators and those who administer this aid are effectively the only ones who are aware of the
recipients name or circumstances and a card is included to simply ask the recipient to receive it as a
gift of Gods love from Scrabo Presbyterian. We seek no acknowledgement as we leave the impact
to the grace of God.

As mentioned in the appendices the ministers office was moved from the church to the Community
office located at the shops. This has helped better integration and understanding of the social issues.
We treat housing, health, education, anti social behaviour all as issues that need addressed not only
by the local community but by the church. We are often asked to mediate in difficult circumstances
and provide hopefully a positive voice on issues of concern. This has helped reduce the perceived
barriers between the church and community and dismantle the idea that the church only engages
either when it suits or for its own enhancement.

This has been of major importance in our desire to provide wholistic ministry as a form of mission
into our community. However, we understand that such projects can only be effective as they reflect
a growing spiritual awareness, discipleship and dependence on God. Consequently we developed
prayer cells or teams whose sole purpose is to pray for our work. Small groups to deepen our
discipleship, there is an emphasis on small groups to provide a project that they feel they can
engage in, directly based on their studies, to demonstrate that learning is not only informative but
practical. Recently we conducted a half night of prayer to pray for our children’s and youth ministry
that proved to be very effective. We changed the Sunday school format which now meets during
Sunday worship, this has proved very successful with leaders working on a monthly rotation cycle.
We have a very strong BB and GB company within Scrabo and in this year alone have noticed a
90% increase of GB children attending Sunday morning worship. We have once again been able to
introduce a youth fellowship and this has started well and is being given the full support of the
leadership and the young people.

Future Mission:

It has been agreed at Session that we consider visiting every house in the parish. We did engage in
this process almost 9 years ago and feel that this is now necessary given that there has also been
some new builds within our parish. We will attempt to present to each home a New Testament book
of the bible, relevant literature and some information about Scrabo Presbyterian.

We are also exploring the idea of a pastoral care team to work both in the community and
congregation. As a leadership we feel that the formation of this must be given sufficient time to
make it effective and sustainable without making it a further drain on limited resources.

Greater emphasis will be placed on youth discipleship, with the prospects of establishing a youth
orientated small group that will fit in with the aims and objectives of the older and more established
groups. The intention of this would be to equip our young people to reach out into our communities
in such a way that demonstrates their care and compassion for people irrespective of class, ethnicity
or gender.

The Holiday Bible Club is a tremendous outreach tool in our community. We do not thankfully
suffer from the ‘club crawl culture’ of many churches with inflated numbers of church children from
the ecclesiastical vicinity. The children who attend are primarily from the estate. This is something
we intend to build on and devise strategies on greater integration at community celebration days and
other cultural events.

We have to a smaller, yet significant extent, been involved in global mission. In the past we have
sent teams out with LIFT, Habitat for Humanity, The Disabled Christian Fellowship, CSSM. We
also have volunteers involved in The Link helping out with friendship schemes and at the drop in
centre. Some have expressed a desire to see links with these organisations grow and develop. It is
our intention to use these existing structures and more to increase our global awareness and
response. We do already endeavour through our links with Christian Aid and Tearfund to support
financially work at home and overseas with a healthy proportion of our finances directed to mission.
We are also aware that approximately 15 people in our church support children through the work of
Compassion, providing education, health care and spiritual input into their lives. We are particularly
keen to support this work on Compassion Sunday and will seek to increase the numbers of those
supporting children. Our small contribution to global mission is never enough, even though it may
be encouraging we will seek to find ways to enhance our responsibility and fulfil Christ’s
commission ‘to make disciples of all nations’.

Weaknesses and Obstacles to Mission:

Our church, like many faces the problem of limited resources. We do not always have sufficient
numbers or finances to do what we think must be done. It is essential that we prioritise what needs
to be done and only do it when the appropriate personnel are made available. Simply because a
good idea has been suggested does not mean that it is the right time to be implemented. For some
time we have held organisational reviews of our activities but of recent we have actually met with
departments, as a leadership, to discuss their vision, observations and potential difficulties that their
work may entail. On occasions we have met with those who have proposed ideas and discussed
their feasibility. Sometimes we have had to decline the invitation to engage in certain initiatives but
since those who have proposed the ideas have shared the exploration with us they often understand
the decisions we have collectively reached.
One area of concern for the leadership is Scrabo housing estate. For some time we have felt
incapable of being a viable presence in that community. Limited resources, lack of congregational
presence, traditional ties with other churches, different development programmes facilitated by
other groups all have meant a growing distance between what we do and what is being done on the
estate. The task of meeting the need is too great for Scrabo Presbyterian and we may need the help
of presbytery to devise a system were we can work in partnership with others, receive additional
staff or support, or indeed divest the responsibility of this to others. Further work and deeper
exploration needs to be done to resolve this problem and we are willing to receive any advice and
support presbytery may offer.

We are aware that wholistic mission means trying to maintain a healthy balance between spiritual
teaching, proclamation and social action. We understand that these ideas are not in competition with
each other but sometimes our activity can be too focused on one to the potential detriment of the
other.

We like many churches have an element of consumerism amongst certain members. Almost a pic
and mix type of Christianity. This dilutes our ability to act as servants within the community
because members are too engrossed in being served.

A potential danger to mission is complacency. As we have grown in numerical attendance, 70%

over the last decade, it would be tempting to feel that we have arrived or achieved a lot in this time.
Whilst we can take satisfaction in what God has already done we cannot let this distract from what
he still has to do.

Where would we like to be in the next five years?

We are not sure we want to add much more to what we already agreed a number of years ago. The
components are there to make sure that we should become effective agents for change not only in
the lives of believers but also within the community. We will constantly monitor the use of our
resources in achieving this goal. Seek to amend and revise elements to make them more effective or
terminate those things that are ineffective. We strongly believe that if we make Christ known to the
church then the church will want to make Christ known to the community. When this happens
addictions are overcome, social dysfunctionality is reduced, paramilitary activity diminished, better
cohesion, better housing, better health, more effective education and greater concern for others. As
people become disciples of Christ the community is transformed from the inside out and the
salvation of local communities is the local church.