Toongabbie Anglican Church Blog

Weekly Blurb

Full steam ahead

Sunday 1 August, 2004 · Posted by Neil Atwood

Sometimes, a church will seem to plod along, not changing much from year to year� And then there�s TAC in 2004!
There is so much good, gospel ministry happening around here at the moment, it�s hard to keep up with it all. And a good deal of it is related to our decision to shift to a training/equipping mode. This is happening in things like our Growth Group Leaders training course, the Two Ways To Live course, SRE and Children�s ministry training, and so on.
But the biggest commitment to this ethos that we have made is to see people in our church first challenged about career diversion into vocational ministry, and then trained and equipped for that as they actually do gospel work — all through the Ministry Training Strategy (MTS).
As most of you know, we currently have Tim Adams and Judy Simpson working as part-time, self funded MTS Apprentices — and doing a fantastic job.
The next step was taken when Parish Council decided last month that we should progress to having a full-time, paid MTS Apprentice in 2005 and beyond (in addition to any self-funded workers). To help push this along, we applied for a small grant from the Western Sydney Regional Council of the Anglican Church.

The great news is that we have been granted the full amount of our requested figure of $8,000!

So now it really is full steam ahead� let me explain how this will happen.

A full time MTS Apprentice is paid a subsistence wage of around $18,000 per year, plus training costs. For the time they are in that position, they work in our church in a variety of ministries and commit to completing a curriculum of training exercises and other material set by MTS. This is done in conjunction with the church�s MTS Trainer (in our case, Neil), under the overall supervision of the Senior Minister.

So, we have $8,000 towards that $18,000 for next year.
That means we need to find the additional $10,000. It�s a challenge, for sure, but think of it in these terms: Up until the end of last year, we employed Sandra Ortega at a cost approaching $9,000 p.a. and we managed to meet that obligation without too much difficulty. We haven�t had that expense this year, but we haven�t reduced our budgeted income either. We simply need to stretch that amount a little further.
Another way of thinking about it: Given a conservative estimate of the number of people giving financially to ministry here, if we average an extra $2.50 or so per �giving unit� per week, will would cover it the whole amount.

If you would like to start giving toward this new ministry initiative now, just mark your donation �MTS� and it will be put aside in a special account until next year.

More importantly, please be much in prayer for the right person for the position, and for the people going to this year�s Club 5 conference (the recruiting arm of MTS) in September — that God would guide them in the path of obedience to Him.

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