Church teaches community connectedness

Gosford church, with more than 200 members, has recently been searching for ways in which it can create a more connected community, with a particular focus on the connections being made with the children and young people of the church.
This desire to build community and resilience in its young people has been a concern for Pastor David Bertelsen and elders of the Gosford church for a number of years. Plans for creating connectedness have been high on their agenda for the past 18 months.
The leaders planned an early strategy by introducing the concept of resilience to the church as a whole and then challenging more members to make significantly greater commitments to the children’s, teen and youth Sabbath schools.
Jonathan Duffy, Adventist health ministries director, is one of the elders at the church who has spearheaded the concept of resilience within Australia via his organisation of the “Circle of courage” ride across Australia. Mr Duffy was invited to introduce the concept of connected communities in a church sermon. Consequently, at nominating committee time, members showed a willingness to commit themselves to the wellbeing of the church’s children and young people.
Following this, a taskforce of seven church members was formed with the objective of being the think tank that would propose additional activities and strategies to current church activities to create community. The taskforce held its first meeting on April 4 and took advice from the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) director for the Greater Sydney Conference, John Tompson, to ensure the entire church was made a part of the program. Mr Tompson has experience with this, having led the Kellyville church in a similar venture in 2005.
From this meeting, focus groups were created to engage with the community-connectedness concepts and share their ideas. More than 30 strategies proposed by the three focus groups were discussed at a later meeting, taking care not to focus on merely social directions, but on spiritual as well.
These strategies aim to reduce the risks faced by young people in the community by encouraging families to provide sufficient care and support, and communities to have an active interest in young people by providing mentors to guide them.
This has involved older church members inviting young people to join them in activities and sharing interests with them. One church member has taken young people on four-wheel-driving expeditions. The chuch has also used its hall to screen football matches, including the first State of Origin game.
Gary Christian, the national director for ADRA and a member of the Gosford church, says, “Studies since the early 1980s have shown that connected communities—pre-eminently church communities—and a connection to a mentoring ‘significant other,’ are some of the strongest elements in building resilience in young people.
“Where society fails to provide a young person with these most important developmental factors, it is most likely the young person will fall into dysfunctional behaviours that will put them severely at risk,” he says. “These behaviours typically include truancy, drug use, early sexual initiation and consequent multiple sexual partners, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, depression and suicide.”
The church and the taskforce have thought up more “connectedness” activities planned for the coming year, and Mr Christian notes, “Whatever strategies are chosen from the existing comprehensive list, they must be readily achievable and rigorously acted upon.”—Adele Nash/Gary Christian