The Parish Council Team takes off in LSM

     Some time ago, I noted that when the local church membership is very small, it is simply not practicable to have two or three separate bodies making decisions around the same mission and ministry. In June, I reported that we combined Team and Council.
    It’s taken some time to get all our ducks in a row. But this week we have the first reasonably complete meeting of the new joint Team and Council.
     We have called five people into particular roles in ministry and have coopted the Treasurer so we have a solid team of six who will be known as the Parish Council Team. They have all the powers of a Parish Council but function as an LSM team with the usual education and support from Ministry Enabler Rosalie who happens to be also our District Superintendent.
     It will save some duplication of thinking, planning and reporting. It will reduce demands on our membership for routine business. And it will eliminate the “them and us” sense that sometimes develops between two bodies.
     We’re still finding our way but we’re on the way…

Thanks to Tim Norwood for the logo suggesting an LSM model of Team and Teams in Mission.

Subtle winds of change in LSM

Our Local Shared Ministry Team doesn’t have any one coordinator personally responsible for parish administration at present. The work in this key role is being done very efficiently by a small team of people with responsibilities in clerical, property and financial matters but there isn’t just one person on the team who holds it all together.
It’s been suggested that the parish should “appoint” someone to join the team, attend team meetings, and look after this role. But this cuts across the fundamental principle that Team members are “called”, not “appointed”.
That may sound like a very small point. Well, take a look at our improvised satellite TV dish outside our bedroom. It’s not nailed down to the deck so it has been blown about in the wind a lot lately and we lose signal. It’s always blown to the same side. All we have to do is put a hand through the door and jiggle the stand and we’re back on air. Simple solution, eh?
But – what you don’t know is that the dish was originally a metre to the left. With the north-easterly winds nudging the stand to the left and our quick re-alignments kicking it back to the right, the entire outfit has crab-walked along the deck. In fact, it’s come so far that it now blocks the ranchslider door. We can’t use the door for its designed purpose any more. Sooner or later, the dish will have to go back to the place that was designated for it.
There are some principles in life and ministry teams that can't be re-aligned casually. They need to be thought through, planned carefully and changed cautiously. Otherwise something really important may be lost.

LSM in a nutshell

A simple introduction to Local Shared Ministry as it began in Bay of Islands Uniting Parish (NZ) in 1992 has been widely distributed. We have found this useful for people who haven't got time to wade through the lengthy explanations that are available from various sources. It's reasonably up to date.

Also, we are still finding a lot of use for a ten minute video documentary that was made the year after we commenced. We have distributed some 60 copies of this in five countries. It is now available on DVD together with three or four other short videos on small churches and LSM. We have often talked of bringing it up to date but actually there's nothing much that we would want to change. 

Our team is down to three in 2008 and we will be having another Calling shortly - probably the fifth or sixth we have had over the 16 years in our 40-family parish.