The Common - The Next Steps
Summary
We, The Common Church, are a community on mission. We’ have a big vision of planting 8 new churches in the City of Melville. Our next steps are to become a sustainable, central community hub that supports marginalized groups, our growing congregation, youth, young and adults.
Our fundraising goal for 2024 is an additional $150,000 to $200,00, which will be used to support this vision, specifically:
Willagee Catalyst
Employ a part-time youth and young adults’ pastor
Secure a larger worship space
Employ James full-time as our minister
Administrative staff
We’re reaching out for donations and partners to assist in us in our mission to further Jesus’s glory in the City of Melville and beyond.
Listen to James explain all this.
Full Audio Transcript
The Vision
A minister once said that if it's a mist in the pulpit, then it's a fog in the pews. What he means by that is that we need to be super clear on our communication. And we want to be super clear at the common on our communication around our vision and what the next steps and goals will be to achieve that vision.
You see, The Common has a big vision because we believe God's given us a big vision. He said to make disciples of all nations and we want to play our part in that.
The city of Melville is made up of 110,000 residents of which 100,000 are not part of a Christian community. That's a tragedy. 100,000 people, if not more, far from God. We would love to play a part in helping see more people come to know Jesus. And part of that is to plant more churches. Missiologists and church planting experts, they talk about having one healthy church to 1,000 people. If that's the case, we need 70 more churches in the city of Melville. That's massive, but we can play our part.
We'd love to plant eight churches in the city of Melville across the 18 suburbs. That'd be part of our goal. But our next step would be to make sure that the common has grown to be a hub, a healthy hub to resource that vision.
The Next Steps
So that's the big vision of the common, but sometimes big visions can be too big for people. And we just need bite-sized next steps to help us find the way towards the vision.
I don't know if you've ever been hiking, but often if you've hiked, and especially in fog, it can be very hard to see the top where you need to go, the destination. And so hikers put little pebbles and stones as markers. They call them cairns, so you can just know the next step. Our cairn, our next step at the common is to grow it to be a hub to resource the larger vision.
Where we are now
So right now, in front of us in the suburb of Willagee, which is in the City of Melville, we've decided and we feel called to minister to the poor and the marginalized. It's a call upon the common, so much so that we've given resources, we've employed someone to live in the suburb of Willagee.
We're calling them the Willagee Catalyst. Now their job is to minister to people here in the suburb, but it takes a lot of resourcing to minister to the marginalized and the poor.
So we've set up many ministries. One of them we call the Spag Bowl Worship Service, where we celebrate Jesus with the marginalized, and then we're able to provide the people there with a good feed and social connection. We'd love to be able to increase this ministry in this area and meet the practical and spiritual needs of this demographic.
We have other examples as well, where we've worked with people who are right on the very margins, where kids need food and shelter and clothing. We've spent time in hospitals with kids and families, provide school uniforms for kids to be able to go to school.
We run a Christmas lunch on Christmas day for the community and those in need every year. Food is eaten, connections are made, and a real sense of family is experienced by the guests and our volunteers at Christmas time.
We gather in many different and wonderful ways in the common. One of those ways of gathering is in what we call missional communities, or for short, MCs. They're smaller groups who are on mission together, but to do that, they need to be a family. And so they gather together, get to know each other, love each other, share life together, and then be able to share the good news of Jesus.
We also meet in the more traditional ways as well, where we run an open and friendly church worship service. We're moving to weekly services in 2024 as our congregation continues to grow, and we're urgently looking for a new building, for a space to worship in.
What We Need, the Next Step
So after a time of prayer, of fasting and discernment, we realised that we need somewhere between $150,000 to $200,000 in 2024 to staff the common well. And that money will go towards five key areas:
The Willagee Catalyst and the ministry to Willagee and to those who live there, who are on the margins.
To employ a part-time pastor to work with our young adults and to oversee the youth ministry and the discipleship programmes that they're part of.
For us to have a larger building, because we've outgrown, it's a good problem, we've outgrown the building that we're in and we need to rent a larger building.
It'll also ensure that I will be the senior minister full-time at the common.
And it'll go towards staffing administration.
We'd love for you to consider how you can give to the common this year. We'd love for you to pray and see if God's calling you to be able to give financially to us as we take these next steps that we believe God has given us.
There's ways you can do that. The easiest way is to jump on our website at thecommon.church and you can donate there. Or if you'd love to make contact with us, please feel free to contact us on the phone or via social media or an email. We'd love for you to consider and give to the common in 2024. So there it is, the big vision and the goal for the common in the coming years. Thank you for considering and watching.
Now, Paul says in Romans 10, he says, how can anyone preach unless they are sent? We want you to send us. He goes on and says, how beautiful are the feet that bring that good news.
We want to be that good news. And so, we'd love for you to partner with us.
Thank you for considering us. God bless you.
James Duff
