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2012 Missional Budget
St. Matthias Episcopal Church
18320 Furrow Road/PO Box 1223
Monument CO 80132
719-359-9204 saint-matthias.org
Q. What is the mission of the Church?
A. The mission of the Church is to
restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.
As described in the Catechism of The Episcopal Church each
congregation that is part of the Christian Church has as its core mission to
reunite with God each person who does not love and serve Him, and to
reunite them with us, His people. “All people” includes our
neighbor, co-workers, friends, and family; they include those who live in our
community, in our nation, and in the world - friend and foe alike. This
mission is carried out by the worshipping community through the fellowship
and mission developed as they grow as disciples who serve one another
and God’s purposes in the world.
It is the strategy for accomplishing each of these five purposes (worship,
fellowship, discipleship, mininstry, and mission) that determine it’s
vision: How will we fulfill our mission? What is our distinctive character?
What is non-negotiable? Who is our target?
These questions have been haunting St. Matthias since 2006. At that
point we moved from being a congregation in recovery to a congregation
seeking a way forward with focus and identity and found none. We loved
each other, maintained high affection for our worship style, and believed
that God had revealed Himself and how we should live in the Bible, but had
not figured out how to translater this into action. We were in God’s
ship, just not under power or with a course.
So we have asked in the last months, “Is God Showing us a
Vision?” in various ways. Primarily this has been asked through our
Strategic Initiatives and the 40 Days of Community. And the aswer seems to
be __ fold:
* Develop personal and regular relaitonship with those we serve in the
community around us and whom we support as missionaries in the world
* Explore additional expressions of worship to engage those not now a part
of our worshipping community
* Invest in Christian Community through small groups with a purpose larger
than themselves
The page that follows seeks to describe how St. Matthias will implement
these aspects of a vision through each of the five purposes of the Church,
and to quantify how we use the resources of facility and finances, people,
and ability to accomplish the mission of the Church. It is the vision of St.
Matthias to create and nurture Christian Communities that reach out in love
and draw others into the family of Christ.
[…to create and nurture Christian Communities that serve the
community and send out missionaries - I’m trying to get at the
groups both being servants as a group and that they would produce some
who are “sent out” because of their gifts and call of God - so
some are missionaries oversees, some are evangelists locally, but all are
able to articulate the Gospel in attractive and truthful ways, that bring people
to Christ and His community, the Church]
[Tri Lakes Chapel’s process is to blanket the TL Reagion with
Christian Community on each street; their target is wholly local - our
neighbors. Who is our target? Is it our neighbors no matter where we live?
Is it diseffected evangelicals? Is it youth and children? Who is God calling
us to reach? TLC can say all becuase their groups are intergenerational
and geographic; our groups are more affinity based, and so we will more
naturally attract those like the group - “families” or
“retire-ees” or “Active servants”; can we
develop the 4 marks of christian community in these more like-staged
groups?]
Worship
(Acts 2:42, NRSV) “They devoted themselves to the apostles’
teaching…, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” Our first
purpose is to please God - to honor him through our words, actions, and
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