22 October 2009

Northern Australia launches new outreach focus

Townsville, Queensland
Melody Tan/Kym Fowler

The Northern Australia Conference (NAC) of the Seventh-day Adventist Church has launched a new outreach focus to complement the traditional evangelistic method commonly used by the Adventist Church.

Almost 60 representatives from Adventist churches in the region, including local church pastors, elders and members, agreed to adopt the "life development" method of outreach after a meeting at the end of September

Miroslav Pujic, director of the General Conference's Centre for secular and post-modern studies,
spoke to church members about post-modern techniques of reaching unbelievers.

"This is a totally new way to reach out to our postmodernist, multicultural and multi-faceted world [filled with different] religious denominational faiths," says church members Ronald and Rosanna Finn. "We are starving for this type of conferencing."

Life development is a strategy that was developed by the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists' Centre for secular and post-modern studies and emphasises on interpersonal relationships as opposed to the conventional method of holding evangelistic meetings.

"When you look at the concept of outreach and evangelism of Jesus Christ, it always happened in the context of Him meeting people where they're at. If they have a felt need, He always addressed that," says David Stojcic, president of NAC. "He created a relationship with people and then he led them step-by-step on their spiritual journey. So life development is really about meeting people where they're at and addressing their felt needs."

Pastor Stojcic is quick to point out that life development does not replace the current form of traditional evangelism but simply presents church members with an alternative method of reaching others.

"Traditional evangelism works and so we'll keep it," says Pastor Stojcic. "This is about showing people that there are other effective ways to reach the community. Life development is basically about becoming a friend to people, meeting their needs and then helping them on their spiritual journey."

Miroslav Pujic, director of the General Conference's Centre for secular and post-modern studies and Australian Union Conference's departmental leaders Graeme Christian and Roger Govender attended the September meetings to help train and promote the life development concept to church leaders.

"I was very impressed by Pastor Pujic's thorough research, distilled concepts...and extremely professional resources," says Kym Fowler, director of health and lifestyle for the NAC.

The concept will be implanted in churches throughout NAC next year.

"Life development will assist churches in the local communities to be truly the salt and the light of the local community," says Pastor Stojcic. "The profile of our churches will be raised by them caring for the needs of the people and leading them on their spiritual journey."

"It's about connecting with people and creating an accepting warm atmosphere in local churches where people really want to belong."

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