Over 3 months, I have enjoyed working with you, Seward folks. Your willingness to create something for the church, and the hope for the future are very impressive and exciting to me and it really enables me to be faithful to our Lord and His church, Seward United Methodist Church.
On a personal note, I thank you for welcoming me as your pastor and I deeply appreciate each of you for loving and supporting me and my family with many prayers and actions. It is evident that Eun Young and the boys are adjusting very well and enjoying themselves in this new environment, even though they still miss their old ones including friends, house, school and restaurants. It is my prayer that as a servant of God I will be faithful in carrying out the responsibilities of my ministry in your midst.
Now, I would like to share with you what I have learned from my experiences in Seward and from the survey that was taken during the summer. I will make some suggestions for the development of our ministry.
First, I have come to know what our weaknesses and threats are.
1. We do not have enough leaders, so some try to do too much.
2. We have a lack of mentoring future leaders.
3. We do not have enough youth and young adults.
4. Many don't want to use their gifts and times for the body of Christ.
5. We do not evangelize, and we have little concern for saving souls.
6. We are supporting only our church instead of another, we do not go out of our building.
6. Our congregation is dwindling and the average age is advancing.
7. We have survival mind-set which is opposite to growth mind-set, acquired by financial concerns.
8. We have fear to try new things in order not to hurt the older people 's feeling in the church.
9. We have a lack of prayer.
10. We have a lack of communication.
Secondly, I have found out our strengths and potentials for growth.
1. We have a clear vision statement for Seward UMC; Worship God, Proclaim Jesus, and Serve with Love.
2. We have a great core of people who are faithful and willing followers of Jesus Christ and we have highly dedicated staff.
3. We have devoted and productive committees.
4. We have taken the Natural Church Development survey and the results indicate that we are not in bad shape in most areas.
5. We have a beautiful church building; it is located in the middle of the community, has a beautiful sanctuary with perfect cooling and heating system, a convenient fellowship hall with very well facilitated education rooms for Sunday school and a room for prayer.
6. We are very good at caring and giving.
7. We are a mission mined congregation. Every month, we have different themes in order to raise money for mission works.
8. We have a lot of children and youth in the community.
9. We have a strong zeal for Bible study.
10. We have willingness, faith and passion for the revival of the church.
Lastly, I would like to suggest some ideas for our ministry based on the analysis of the strengths and weaknesses and also according to our vision statement. I think we need to develop goals for ministry that can be applicable, practicable, and visible. The church without predetermined goals is like traveling without a map. I believe that our goals should be developed out of prayer, study of Scripture and directed dreams by not only pastor, but also all of the church members together. I hope the following will be ideas that can be discussed, and developed at each related committee and church council as well.
1. First of all, we need to ignite a prayer movement among all the members of the church. All of our efforts are really meaningless if we are not connected to the Lord. Psalm 127:1 reminds us that “unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.” We need to spend time in prayer. As we look at the New Testament we see that the early Christians spent time praying alone, but they also prayed together with great power. I believe that the Lord is going to help us grow in the area of praying together.
2. We need to take care of our existing members more carefully and effectively by dividing us into 7 groups and by selecting 7 leaders from the congregation and assigning them to look after each of the groups. In Exodus 18:13-26, Moses was taking his seat to serve as judge for the people, Jethro, his father-in-law advised him to select capable men from all the people and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens, and have them serve as judges for the people.
I believe that it is not good nor effective for a pastor to take care of everything. No one is big enough or good enough to do it all alone. There must be others to share the work load, and there needs to be good distribution of the load.
We can see another example in Acts 6:1-7. The Twelve Apostles let the people choose seven men to take care of the needs of followers. The Apostles said, "Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word." And the Bible added, "This pleased the whole group."
4. We need to become a more invitation focused, more seeker focused congregation. We have little concern with saving souls and there has not been enough evangelism. We have to keep it in mind that the church does not grow without new members. According to a statistic report, 60% of Western Pennsylvania is unchurched. I think Seward is within the range of that percentage. And I believe that this breaks the heart of God and that he wants to use us to reach out.
I suggest that we should organize a visitation Team, and to create a community wide calling program for evangelism. I hope we will be able to contact every person in the Seward area with the gospel. What will this look like? I’m not sure, but I am looking forward to working with people to make it happen. Some of the ideas as means of contacting people include using events like July 4th parade, Halloween Treat or Trick, Christ walk... As you know, the Korean Church has achieved tremendous growth in the short period in spite of the many troubles and confusions. One of the elements of the Korean Church growth is that they poured a great deal of energy into the work for soul winning through enthusiastic 'street evangelism' and 'house to house evangelism'. I hope that we will be able adopt it as a model of our ministry here in Seward.
5. We need to help our members discover their spiritual gifts, and use it for the body of Christ. The NCD survey result indicates that our minimum factor is "Gift-oriented Ministry. In other words, we still have many 'Sunday Christians' who are satisfied with attending just Sunday worship service but do nothing in the church. We need to train and mentor them to be involved in the ministry and toward the full use of their spiritual gifts. An implementation team should be organized and work on the minimum factor as soon as possible.
6. We need to work more on children, youth, and young adults programs beyond Sunday School. We have to meet their needs with new options, increased flexibility, small group meeting and contemporary worship as well. I would like to suggest that we will form a task force team for researching and preparing for the ministry programs for our young people here in Seward.
7. We also need to focus on the elderly and create some special programs for them, because the majority of the community is made up of senior citizens. For example, we can think about 'Senior College' 'Social Service program' 'Communion Delivery Service' and 'transportation service'.
8. We need to celebrate and work on our strength, 'Inspiring Worship Service' by reforming our worship service continuously. I want to see that we are using more modern technology in the worship service like projector and power point. I also want see that a praise team is organized tro lead us in singing gospel and contemporary songs during the Sunday worship service.
9. I will maintain visiting all members of the church all the year round. And I will place special emphasis on visiting with those who are newly bereaved, hospitalized, home bound, or in long term care facilities.
10. We need to publish our news letter regularly in order to better communicate with church members. I understood that it's been done occasionally by our church secretary alone but I would like to suggest forming a team of editors to do the job more efficiently.
It is a custom in the conversation among the Korean pastors who meet each other for the first time, to ask each other, "How many people do you have in your church? You may think it is an improper question but it represents how they show the zeal and passion for church growth. As Korean pastor, I myself also have a strong zeal and passion for the revival of our church.
I was so impressed and challenged when I read the column of our bishop Bickerton in the InterLink which was issued on August 29, 2008. He illustrates our neighbor church, Blacklick UMC as the model of evangelism. The church recently received 41 persons on Profession of Faith during one worship service! The congregation has 270 members and an average attendance of 135. In a day the membership of the church grew by 15 percent! What a wonderful model! This is exactly what I am praying for, and I believe that there’s nothing we can not do if Jesus Christ is in the midst of us. We can do it, too! Yes, we can do more through Him who strengthens us.
I close my report to you by praying that you will look joyfully to our future together. I humbly ask for your wholehearted support as we carry out our God-given mission. Together, I believe we can make a difference in our community and the world.
Duk-Hee, Han
The pastor
