Strategic Plan

Our Vision

We exist to create missional communities. Our dream and vision is to birth a missional community that births hundreds of missional communities locally and oversees.

They are made up of primary communities that come together to practice disciplines; live in community and outwork mission and mentoring. Each being unique and eventually autonomous communities distinctive to the culture and community it is engaging and living in.

We want to meet people where they are at and walk with them as they journey through life, wrestling with spirituality in the context of their culture. Hopefully the Junction can be the crossroad, an intersection between God and people.

Theological basis

The meaning of missional community

We see our culture as a mission field and ourselves as missionaries. The key is we see Christ redeeming culture and the churches role is to engage culture. Rather than being afraid of it, which leads to building our own inward self-absorbed culture that is distant, irrelevant and protected from it, we love and embrace culture. I Corinthians 5: 9-11.

We recognise we live in a post-modern culture where young people are suspicious of institutions and are champions of causes that promote community and diversity. We understand that we have to continue to listen and interact with the emerging generation so as to best communicate the timeless truths of the Gospel. I Corinthians 9:20-23.

The key theological value is in the Going. We see ourselves as called to ‘Go’ out into the world as a missionary rather than a consumer, attractional model. We are not satisfied with the end result being bringing people to a service or meeting. There will always be a place for corporate worship and celebration however we believe Gatherings are for the celebration of the mission we are all involved in. We read the great commission in Matthew 28:18 with a Hebrewic world view which reads the text as it was originally written, which is ‘as you go about your life.’ Go is not just something you do as a program; it is a way of life.

We see mission as both word and deed. We believe it is as valid to preach the word as to live it through act of kindness and service. If there is an issue with literacy in our area then our role is to contribute to solutions to improve it. That is the Gospel in action. St Francis of Assisi said ‘at all times preach the Gospel, if you must, use words

We believe through personal discipline and mentoring we can together fight some of the injustices in our community and make a difference to our neighbours. That Jesus model was one on one discipleship and the sharing of life. In John 3: 22 it states that ‘Jesus spent time with the disciples.’ The word ‘spent time’ means to literally ‘rub through the skin.’ Jesus spent so much time with them that who he was rubbed of on them. ‘Everything is done with the few for the salvation of the multitudes (Coleman. 1963:37).’

The Community of Oneness

We believe the Trinity is the ultimate example of community. We see how God lives in it and modelled to us the way to live, in community. We were created to live in community and reflect the Godhead. Genesis 1:26-27. Postmodernism is showing us how our culture is thinking more and more like separate tribal groups. We want to provide a variety of groups that embrace all types of families and individuals.

‘For the first time in history we are living in a world where seven generations are living side by side…The fault lines between generations are getting larger and more numerous. One of the great challenges for the church, therefore, is to niche multigenerational worship, multigenerational missions, multigenerational education (Sweet. 1999:164).’

We see life as a journey and we want to walk the road of life having shared life with those we love and those God brings across our paths at their junction of life. We want to provide the environments where people can ask lots of questions and feel free to be themselves, make mistakes and explore things.

Ministry is for everyone, wether male or female, educated or not, Greek or Jew we are all one in Christ. Galatians 3:28. It not about a leadership title but everyone being equals and treated the same way and given the same opportunity to contribute. Women have as much opportunity as men, singles have as much opportunity as married people and there are no favourites. ‘The mark of authentic community is full participation of its members in the ministry of community. Oneness cannot happen …when there is ugly discriminations. The impairment of one part of the body can cripple the whole body.1 Corinthians 12:26. (Bilezikian. 1997.128).’

‘There is nothing-no accomplishment, no organization or country-there is nothing as important as the church, and only the church will survive history to share in Gods eternity…Anyone who claims to love Christ without loving the church that Christ loves does not really love Christ. 1 John 4:20-21. (Bilezikian. 1997:10, 170).’

Type of church

The Junction is a CRC outreach church belonging to the CRC churches International. The CRC is a Pentecostal denomination being founded by Leo Harris in the 1950s. We are under one year old and so are classed as an outreach church. We have to apply to the Victorian State executive to be recognized as an official church. We qualify when we have consistently twenty adult members and a formalized leadership. We currently have thirty-five adults, twenty-one children and are forming a leadership team.

We are a postmodern culturally relevant missional community. We align ourselves with Forges’ teaching and network. Forge is a mission church planting organization that trains church planters and consults churches. We are made up of small organic primary communities. We are pioneering an experimental community that is relooking at traditions such as preaching, communion and liturgy. Evan how we meet and the frequency are being reviewed.

We chose ten core people as our church planting team along with the two families that were leading the plant. We worked with them for ten months developing our core values, vision and Gatherings. In July we hired the local pub in Berwick and had a party to celebrate the launch of our community. We gave all the money we raised on the night to a local non-profit organization that works with Kids in Crisis.

Leadership structure and ministry model

The Junction started with two pastors and their wives forming the founding leadership team and approaching the leadership as co-church planters. The four of them choose the ten core people and then began a consultative process of dreaming, visioning and getting buy in and feedback from the team as to the type of community we wanted to be.

As finances were being collected we formed a finance team to manage the money. Three lay people and the two pastors formed the team. They meet monthly to discuss the finances. These people were chosen based on character, faithfulness and competence in finances. However the meetings often included more leadership issues than finance issues. We decided to include the spouses, as they were as competent and suitable for leadership as the original team. We decided to change the finance team into a trial emerging leadership team.

A year after starting we are transitioning from co-church planters as the leaders to Kim Hammond as the leader of the leadership team. The Hammond’s have moved into the Berwick area where the church is focusing its mission. They want to build a team who will lead and pastor the local primary communities and their leaders. Steve Swain will stay on the leadership team as a senior elder and a pastor with thirty years of experience to continue to support and disciple Kim and Maria.

Kim is paying for mentoring by a pastor from John Marks Ministry. They see each other every six weeks and they reflect and feedback about the church and how Kim is going personally. He holds Kim accountable for how many bed nights he is away and how his marriage is going. Twice a year he comes and stays at Kim’s house and watches Kim at home while reflecting with his wife as well. He is in contact with the other pastor and Kim’s team has permission to contact him with any concerns.

Belonging to the CRC means that if there was any reason that Kim was unethical financially, biblically or sexually, the CRC has the right to step in and work with the existing leadership in stepping him down, governing the church and appointing a new leader. However the local church is primarily autonomous and self-governing. This is stated in the constitution and talked about in leadership meetings.

There are several pastors who have regular input into the leadership and the community. The relationship is ongoing and they are often used as a resource, sounding board and in regular consultation. They give outside perspective on the community and guide the leaders through difficult decisions and conflicts.

The hub of our community is our primary communities, they are when several people decide to share life by holding each other accountable, practicing disciplines and doing mission together, they are saying they need and love each other.

This organic coming together we call a primary community, the first group a person belongs to, serves and loves. Our church is made up of several different primary communities coming together around families, stage of life or common interest. They generally share a meal, prayer, engage the bible and chat about how to live missionaly as a follower of Christ. They can gather at any time and any place and try to flow with the natural rhythm of life. Randy Frazee believes ‘healthy community characteristics are spontaneity, availability, frequency, eating together and geography (Frazee. 2001:149).’

They gather with the other primary communities at certain Gatherings to hear stories, for training, and friendship. Once or twice a term all the primary communities try and come together to do a community project in the local area together.

The key is the sharing of life NOT the weekly or fortnightly meeting. The meeting is just a focal point on a calendar out of week of phone calls, meals, and spontaneous living. The more organic and natural people live together then are the more effective and meaningful the community feels. Bill Hybels states ‘that it is more than just working with other people, its doing life deeply with one another as we serve together (Hybels. 2002:74).’

The leadership team is made up of the most mature, gifted and teachable leaders of these primary communities. Kim and these leaders mentor any other primary community leaders who are not on the leadership team. The ideal being everyone that is in a ‘PC’ disciples others, that will eventually lead to their own ‘PC.’