Hello friends!
We are at the end of another year. We have accomplished many things in 2023, and New Church Ministry could not have done it without you. Our first major event this year was an in-person Coaching Academy. This is significant because it was the first in-person Coaching Academy since the end of COVID-19 restrictions. Additionally, it was a massive success because of our budding relationship with the ELCA coaching ministry of the Lutheran Church. We look forward to making our coaching program more robust to better serve the emerging and affiliating leaders who come through Leadership Academy.
This was also a General Assembly year. Many of you came to visit us in our booth and helped us with the rollout of the DisciplesNEXT framework. We had a nearly full capacity at our seminar during GA. Again, we cannot do our work without you. Many of you have supported us by being there and giving us so much financially. If you’re not aware, Disciples Church Extension Fund is in the midst of an endowment campaign called New Ways into the World. Every last dollar counts, so we want to thank you for all the work you’ve put in to help us train, equip, assist, and multiply emerging and affiliating leaders.
With all that being said, you can look for new things to happen in the future. We look to bolster our coaching program, recruit new coaches for the new leaders, and make our coaches available to congregations wanting to do new ministry. We’re also focusing more on content creation to resource all congregations for us to really lean into the “share the Good News” portion of our denominational mission statement. Lastly, we will continue to focus evermore on our partnerships within our denomination and on our ecumenical partners so that we may fully live into our identity as being “a movement for wholeness and a fragmented world.”
~ Rev. Dr. Jose Martinez, Minister of New Church Strategies
