Through the Regional Mission Leader, we provide initiatives that support and encourage pastors and churches in growing their impact in the local communities.  

Pastors’ Clusters
The primary purpose of the cluster meeting is to strengthen relationships between our Pastors. They meet monthly for sharing, prayer and discussion. Each pastor is given the opportunity to share personally in their small group where they can benefit from the collective wisdom of others, be prayed for and be encouraged.

RML Meeting with Pastors
Pastoral care of our congregants is a given. Unfortunately, this does not always translate over to our senior pastors. We see caring for our pastors as a priority and to that end the RML has set up a meeting schedule that ensures all our senior, associate and assistant pastors are visited at least twice a year.

LEAD Conference
This is a national event, primarily for Baptist Leadership teams, held annually in June. The vision of LEAD is to equip, empower and engage our people with tools and inspirational insights to leadership in a Kiwi context. More information may be found here https://www.baptist.org.nz/lead/

Critique of Church Growth Performance
Our understanding of Baptist ecclesiology makes it difficult for the Executive to insist on the opportunity to investigate a church’s numerical decline, and by implication, its health and future viability. However, we have a mandate from the Baptist Union to ask for a meeting with any of our churches that show a consistent downward numerical trend. The reality is, statistics do not lie. Experience shows that most pastors/leaders are willing to talk through the issues as they see them, and are open to receiving constructive critique. We want to ensure that pastors’ gifts are being used to the best in extending God’s Kingdom. We are committed to following through with this process.

Mentor/Coach for Pastors
Research confirms what we know anecdotally or intuitively — that mentoring works. At its most basic level, mentoring helps because it guarantees a person that there is an experienced friend who cares about them, and who is there to help in any number of situations. Meeting regularly with a mentor/coach provides the mentee with real-world knowledge that bridges the gap between the theology of leadership and coal-face leadership. The RML is responsible for supporting our pastors to find a mentor/coach. Pastors will be strongly encouraged to build on this mentor/coach relationship by meeting every 4-6 weeks. Where there is a cost to the pastor, their ministry enhancement allowance can be legitimately used for this.

Other focuses include:

• Provide leadership development

• Actively encourage our pastors to tend to not only their spiritual growth but also their emotional health

• Resource growing churches and specific church ministries  

• Help pastors and churches through conflict

• Help nurture relationships between churches and the National Centre

• Promote inter-dependence between pastor’s and churches

• Challenge status-quo thinking

• Provide support and guidance in the identifying and calling of a new pastor