Congregational Mission Planning
Our Mission Planning Group met for the first time on Friday morning 9th October. The Group will continue to meet throughout October in order to at least attempt to offer an outline Mission Plan to Presbytery at the beginning of November. A final version of our Mission plan is to be submitted in March of 2027. The Group members are Sandra Burt, Mark Williams, John Walker, Elspeth Briody, Douglas Wallace and Rev Mackenzie. We will endeavour to keep you up to date on developments as the success of any plan for the future depends on everyone playing their part. We wish to make you aware of our thinking and process not just the final plan.
The second meeting of the Mission Planning Group took place on Friday 16th October by which time a Visionary Mission Statement had been drafted and was accepted by the group as a pretty good starting point with virtually no alternations to it. We bear in mind that the Congregational Mission Plan is being submitted by the Trustee Body NOT the Planning Group so we keep the Trustees abreast of discussion all the time. The Trustees are at liberty to change anything they feel needs changing before they submit the draft plan to Presbytery in early November. Presbytery will offer some helpful (we hope) comments and the work to produce a final version of our Mission Plan by March of 2027 will then continue. The Plan and Mission Statement are to be reviewed each year just to be sure it is still relevant and we are keeping our focus.
The Mission Planning Group will meet on Friday 23rd October and again on Friday 30th as we work through various sections of the Mission Plan template provided by Presbytery which focusses on various aspects of church life. All the time trying to keep a focus on the Visionary Mission Statement and how each aspect of church life helps us to fulfil it.
The question might already be forming in your mind… Why are we doing this?? Well every congregation in the Church of Scotland is required to form a Mission Action Plan. So we are not alone in confronting this task. What began life as the Presbytery Mission Plan Act was updated a couple of years ago to include this congregational element. It may have been said before that though this is quite a lot of work it comes at a good time for Westhills as we try to find our identity and focus as a new congregation.
Nothing is meant to be secret in this process as the Mission Plan needs everyone to help make it work so, attached here is the outline of things so far. Once discussions have moved forward and there is more to share it will be made available to you