Members Meetings should be about more than reports and voting. They should be a place where we celebrate together God’s goodness to us as we look back, where we look forward as the leaders share where God is directing us to take the church, and above all where we pray for God’s powerful work in His people and the work of the church.

The Members Meeting last week was our church AGM, and we looked back at the past year through a number of reports and saw God’s blessing on us in providing new staff and finance through the year. We shared the financial challenges as we seek to expand the outreach activities and missionary engagement of the church in the years ahead.

We were excited to hear the testimonies of 7 people who had applied to join the church as new members and to accept each of them as members, and to re-elect four Trustees and one new Trustee so that our leadership team of Elders and Deacons is at full strength.

But what I want to share with you were the One year and Five year objectives we have set for ourselves as an Eldership for the church. In our January Magazine we shared with you the new Church Vision. Now we want to express what this looks like as we move towards a church which is fulfilling the commissions of Jesus before His Ascension.

The headlines of our Five Year objectives were as follows:

• Growth by the Regular heart-beat of people coming to the Lord
• Evident maturity seen in all believers growing in Grace, the Fruit of the Spirit, Servant-Heartedness, Passion for God and Passion for the lost
• CBC is a leading centre of discipleship and training in Cheltenham, the area and nationally
• CBC is a ‘church planting church‘ which has planted or is revitalising a church in the most needy area of Cheltenham
• CBC is a ‘sending church‘ – training and regularly sending out valuable leaders, workers and planters into the national and global mission field

These are ambitious but reachable objectives which are suitable for a church of the size of CBC. However, we will not reach these unless we develop carefully, step by step. We have started towards many of these already, and a recent commitment by the leaders that CBC will make church revitalisation / planting a core part of who we are as a church, as well as a review of Mission and Missionary Support both are practical steps towards this. But, we need annual objectives which are smaller steps towards these five year goals.

So, the headlines from the One Year objectives (April 2018-April 2019) are as follows:

• Admin, leadership, and Pastoral structures for growth are all put in place and bedded in
• Intentional Witness becomes part of the CBC ‘DNA’
• Integration of every believer into church life so that every person is using the gifts God has given them within church life or for outreach
• Effective communication of the vision and objectives of the church to the church as a whole
• Expectation of great things from God

We know we are being called by God to be a church which is fulfilling its call to “Go into all the world and make disciples“. As a leadership we believe that these are great stepping stones to help us be a church which is obedient to the Lord’s call, a body which will fulfil the commissions to Love, Grow and Go with the gospel so that Cheltenham, this nation and the world are impacted for God’s Kingdom.

[You can find out more detail on these objectives and on our commitment to be a planting/revitalising church from hand-outs that are available from the church office.]