Reformed Presbyterian Minutes of Synod 1997 - Rparchives.org

74 MINUTES OF THE 1997 SYNOD OF THE
1 Ethnic (cross-cultural) mission church
By July 27, all eight of these mission churches will have been organized!! And,
as you can see from the list above, many more possibilities are on the horizon. For
this we give all the praise to our Redeemer "who desires all men to be saved and to
come to the knowledge of the truth" (I Timothy 2:4).
What is even more encouraging is that these new works are spread across five of
our six North American Presbyteries and that one of them is a classic "daughter"
work.
Because of this unprecedented growth, the Board has decided to modify its
priorities within our overall goal to the following:
1. Strengthen newer works
2. Develop additional new works which God sends us
3. Evangelism training
4. Develop additional church planters
What this means is that our first priority is to look for ways to help the
presbyteries strengthen their newest mission churches. This may mean that we
may offer additional church planter training opportunities and materials.
Presbyteries are encouraged to make suggestions to the HMB.
Church Planter/Organizing Pastor Training
At last summer's RP International Conference the HMB offered a series of
workshops and training sessions for interested church planters, seed families,
sessions and other interested people. These workshops are available on tape for
your use.
There are at least 14 men who are involved directly in church planting that have
not yet been able to attend an RP Church Planter Training Conference. In
addition, those who have attended in the past have progressed to later stages of
the church planting process and could benefit from more advanced training. In
light of this, we hope to offer another Training Conference sometime in the next
12 months. Please pray with us about this and give us your suggestions.
Evaluating Potential Church Planters
The 1995 Synod approved the following recommendation:
That Synod encourage the HMB to work with presbyteries in the development
of an evaluation process which will enhance the appointment of qualified men to
be church planters.
The Board continues to see an evaluation process for potential church planters
as a useful tool to help a presbytery decide who they should call to a new work.
We would like to have a process that is done by Reformed Presbyterians for
Reformed Presbyterians with a possibility of some outside experienced help. In
order to work toward this goal, we participated in an OPC "Readiness for
Reformed Ministries in the '90's" seminar. One of us served as an evaluator and
church planter John McFarland volunteered to participate as an evaluatee. As
John will readily tell you, it was a positive experience for him as well as for the