by Rev. Antonieta Wyrick, Chairperson of New Faith
Hello brothers and sisters in Christ. Greetings in the name of the Lord Almighty Jesus the Christ.
We, the New and Vital Faith Committees took time away from our busy schedules to spend twenty-four hours to discuss the work that we have been doing in 2022 and 2023. Also, we met to discuss and put together the goals and budget for 2024. The vision of the committee is to: “Innovate, collaborate and act to grow new and existing churches within 5-7 years.”
At the beautiful views of Mingus Mountain this week, nine of the members of NVF began the meeting with lunch then at 1:00 pm we got together to work our agenda. First, we had a devotional with a skit “How to Pray” based on the Scripture from Luke 11: 1-4, then we prayed, inviting the Lord to guide and be present in every decision and goals that we will take in our meeting.
As a committee we understand the importance of providing educational and economical resources to the church planters and churches. It’s necessary also to assess the activities recognizing what has been done well and what needs to be completed or done better.
We had satisfactorily reached the goals from 2022 and 2023.
One of our goals was to engage the 25% of our churches in trainings or resourcing, we haven’t
finished the year 2023 and we already have had 41% of churches engaged in resources from New and Vital Faith and a total of 260 participants in our training and webinars.
The goal of starting a new Hispanic/Latino church has been successfully reached as Iglesia Aliento has begun their pre-launch worship in central Phoenix. We will continue the goal that, in the next 1-2 years, NVF will offer 2-3 trainings annually to Hispanic/Latino lay and clergy in the conference plus an annual Hispanic retreat and revitalize 1-2 existing Hispanic/Latino churches to self-sustainability.
Another goal is to continue monthly check-ins for church planters.
We are committed to reaching out to other diverse future leaders and a BIPOC internship program began in July with two interns in Tucson and Yuma and three other young adults that have connected with the New and Vital Faith Office. Our goal is to mentor 8-20 young adults (18-30 years old) in the next 1-2 years and must include BIPOC interns that represent at least 25% in 2024 moving to 50% by 2028.
We also set the goal to offer mentorship and one new training to all laity and clergy in hopes of creative ministries in 2024. We currently have: Hatchathon, Monday Moments, and Fresh Expression trainings. We hope to continue offering grant writing services for these new projects.
Other goals include the vision to have 70% of churches engage with NVF resources and to launch a new faith community in the north district by June of 2024.
With the help of the Lord we worked on all the points of the agenda and one final thing that was discussed was to present the legislation at Annual Conference to merge New Faith and Vital Faith committees as one Committee.
