Rod Robson, the Chair of the Assembly Council, brings you this update from the recent Assembly Council gathering on 31 July–1 August.
Hi Peeps
Two weeks ago, the Assembly Council gathered for our two-day August meeting.
Day 1 was a room full of great people. Not only was the Assembly Council there, but the national Lead Team, the Regional Leaders, the Carey Principal and the Director of Arotahi joined us. We were meeting together to have some big discussions about our next ‘bite’: how we find and train our future pastoral leaders.
Did you know that 50% of our Baptist pastors are over the age of 55? We’re going to need more pastors joining the ranks in the coming years. However, these conversations weren’t about what we don’t have but about how we, together as a movement, will get to the solution side.
We talked about what we want to see in our future pastoral leaders... people with integrity, initiative, influence and intelligence. We discussed some practical ways to help find and equip these people. Keep an ear out, as some exciting stuff is coming in this space soon.
The Assembly Council ended the day with a feast of venison back steaks around the fire at Blue Bradley’s. We’ve tried to spend time this year connecting relationally with each other outside of meetings. The benefits of this have flowed through to our formal meetings.
On day 2, we cracked on with our formal meeting agenda, and what a full meeting. Many of the discussions we are currently having involve work that fell out of the past two National Hui, including some Assembly Council decisions made public during this last week. The decisions made will significantly shape our movement over the next few years. With this in mind, we started the day with a strategic overview to position our decisions within the wider context.
You will be aware of the consultation process regarding the constitutional review process. The Constitution Review Committee has taken the time to consider all this consultation and seek legal advice. At this meeting, we approved the proposed motions for constitutional change that will be voted on at National Hui 2024. These motions were officially notified on August 6 in an email to each church and in the Support Crew e-newsletter sent to pastors and church administrators.
The other thing mentioned in the above email was our decision to extend the Assembly Council term for a further one year to support continuity. We sought an indication of support for this at each regional hui, and as the ‘Assembly between the Assemblies’ we made the following decision:
On the basis of the majority support of the movement, as expressed at the Regional Hui, that Assembly Council does not seek nominations for Assembly Council for 2024/25, and extends the term of current Assembly Council members for a further one year.
We believe this will give us stability at a crucial time when we have a lot of ongoing work on the agenda.
The next item on the agenda was an update on consultation for the proposed Serious Misconduct Process. Work on this is ongoing, and we will meet again at the end of August to consider the final green paper before the churches are notified of the next steps. This is an important piece of work, particularly at a time when we have recently begun reading and considering the final report from the RCI Abuse in Care, Whanaketia. You can see our initial response to the report here.
After lunch, we sat with the chair of the Carey Baptist College Board and the Carey Principal to approve the proposed motion to purchase 1 – 7 Marewa Road, Greenlane, as a new campus for Carey and offices for the National Support Centre, Arotahi, and Northern Baptist Association. We are excited about what this property will allow Carey to do in the future. You can read more about this next chapter here.
We followed this with report-backs from each of our subcommittees:
- Baptist Pastoral Leadership have been providing support to the Serious Misconduct Process consultation, ethics review, and Carey Baptist College
- The Constitution Review Committee has been working on the proposed constitution changes
- Audit, Finance and Risk have been monitoring our finances and risks as a movement, including reviewing the budget and church compliance levels
- Te Tiriti Hīkoi have been thinking about ways that Assembly Council can interface with Baptist Māori (through Te Runanga and Te Whāriki)
- Strategic Relationships has been connecting with Regional Associations and other Baptist entities, seeking to deepen board-to-board relationships with the Assembly Council
A lot is going on, but I am encouraged by the good people working on behalf of our movement to shape our future. As a movement, we are seeing more alignment, improving our governance capability, making solution-focused decisions, and keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus.
