Update from the President
A Japanese proverb goes as follows: "Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare." How true!
Doing the work of God means seeing where we want to end up and doing what it takes to get there. Our vision is God's great purpose for humanity, which is to bring many children to glory--keeping in mind that God does the calling of and conversion of those who will ultimately become His glorified children.
Getting to the vision is the action contained in our Mission Statement. It is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God in all the world, to make disciples in all nations and to care for those disciples.
I truly believe that we have a special part in God's purpose to reach this world with the gospel message that Jesus Christ brought and commissioned His followers to preach. I truly believe the greatest days for our mission are ahead of us.
My daily work is dictated by a road map called the Strategic and Operation Plan which breaks down the overall mission into a number of steps. It contains guiding principles that dictate how we will go about doing God's work. Further, it contains the goals we wish to achieve in the proclamation of the gospel and caring for brethren in our congregations around the world.
This is further explained in measurable objectives, critical success factors and barriers. Finally, a list of strategies catalogs the actual agreed-upon things that we plan to do in the coming year.
As part of this plan, a proposed budget is presented that spells out how much revenue we expect to receive and how we will divide it among the various activities of the United Church of God. We are also looking for new sources of revenue to accomplish all that we need to. Plus, we are adding a more vigorous planned giving strategy in the coming year for members and coworkers to consider.
This Strategic Plan, Operation Plan and Budget booklet continually stays on the top of my desk. It is a transparent document for all to see. You can see the current plan yourself on our Council of Elders website at coe.ucg.org in the "Most Recent Council Updates" section. I refer to it often to refresh myself of all the elements that go in the Operation Plan that I am responsible for. It is my guide for prayer, asking God to help me fulfill my part in it. I look over the lists of strategies and see that nothing is neglected. We are mailing out the proposed strategic and operating plan next week to all elders who will be balloting on it at the Annual Meeting of the General Conference of Elders in May.
The special areas of focus are, first, our preaching of the gospel. We manage the variety of ways we reach out: Beyond Today magazine and television program, booklets and other literature, Internet and Personal Appearance Campaigns (PACs). We carefully consider every word that we speak not only in content, but also in tone and voice. We continually ask ourselves: Is our message effective and compelling?
Second, we consider our brethren, congregations and ministry. We are in a period of transitioning from an older to a younger ministry. More than a few will be retiring in the months ahead. In this transition we are training new men to become future pastors. We are planning to hire at least four new trainees this year in addition to the six we hired last year.
An important part of this process is the training of our new leaders. We are developing a program not only for training new ministers, but also for continuing the education of our current elders.
The new trainees are being sent to areas of the country where mentor pastors are teaching them hands-on skills in how to visit, counsel, speak and manage a pastorate. Their wives are very much a part of the ministerial team in supporting their husbands and serving in the local congregation. This is so very exciting to all of us here in the administration. We are seeing our way through this transition and are pleased with the new leadership.
We are always keeping our eyes and ears open to any new opportunity or methodology to do the work of God. As the new fiscal year begins we will be robustly streaming Beyond Today television on various services such as Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Android devices, Samsung TVs and other platforms. Jesus Christ knew that He had a certain window of opportunity for His earthly mission when He said, "I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work" (John 9:4). The same holds true for us.
I truly believe that we have a special part in God's purpose to reach this world with the gospel message that Jesus Christ brought and commissioned His followers to preach. I truly believe the greatest days for our mission are ahead of us. We are blessed with the truth about the meaning of our times, knowledge of who and what we are and what we need to be doing to prepare for the return of Jesus Christ and our eternity. This lends itself to the theme of this year's annual GCE meeting, which is "Living the Word."
Thank you for your prayers, and please support our hands as we try our best to foresee the future and do what God wants us to do to get there.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
