Mission Plan (2016-2019) Overview
From 2005-2016, The Salvation Army in New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga adopted a Territorial Strategic Mission Plan (TSMP) that focused on four goals. TSMP proved extremely helpful in providing focus for Salvationists, however, in 2016, senior leaders sensed that TSMP had reached the end of its life, and so at Congress in 2016, this new Mission Plan was launched.
There’s a saying that culture eats strategy—in other words, even with the best plans in the world, people’s hearts and attitudes determine what is achieved. Leaders felt that God was calling us back to a focus on our hearts and attitudes, to consider: Why do we care for people, transform lives and reform society? And what sort of people do we need to be?
This new Mission Plan was designed to answer these questions—to clarify our Purpose (our why), define our Values (what sort of people do we need to be), and from these, identify areas in which need to improve most over the next few years.
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To make the plan easy to remember, it was simplified to 1-2-3:
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One Purpose
So what is our Purpose (our why)?
One of the ways Jesus described his mission was to bring life. For example, in John 10:10, Jesus is recorded as saying, ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.’ But what is this life?
In summarising the life of Jesus, John writes that his gospel was written so that ‘you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name’ (John 20:30-31). This is our why. We want people to have this full and forever life that comes through a relationship with Jesus.
Wonderfully, this was well understood by our early New Zealand Salvationists who chose ‘Te Ope Whakaora’ as the term for The Salvation Army’s work to Māori, a term that translates as the group or Army that brings life.
Two Practices
- Living like Jesus is about reflecting the values and qualities of Jesus in all aspects of our lives, to draw people towards him. If we truly want to be the Army that brings Life, we must model the fullness of life that comes from a relationship with Jesus, starting from our officers and other leaders, and continuing through all our Salvationists and staff.
- Doing mission together is about being intentional in offering holistic ministries that meet people’s spiritual, physical, emotional and social needs, with seamless connections between our faith communities and social service centres.
We're calling these practices, to emphasise that these should be 'how we always do things around here'. These practices describe the culture we want to see normalised across our territory.
For Three Years
We will continue to focus on our mission—and our previous goals of making disciples, recruiting and deploying soldiers, fighting injustice and developing leaders will always be important. But the plan is to put extra emphasis on these two practices for three years, with the expectation that this short term focus will lead to an ongoing and improved missional culture.
A full Mission Plan document is available providing background to the plan, further explanation of the key aspects, introduction of our values, and our strategy for achieving the plan. Follow this link to download a copy of the Mission Plan document.
We thank God for what was achieved with TSMP and look forward to what is still to come through this new Mission Plan.
Supporting Resources
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Mission Plan Overview PresentationPowerpoint slides for use in presenting an overview of the Mission Plan, including history, purpose, practices and values. Feel free to adapt this to your requirements. |
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Mission PlanThe full Mission Plan document. |
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Mission Plan Summary BrochureA summary of the mission plan for general reading.Printed copies of the summary are available by contacting the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. |
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Mission Plan Posters and Wallet CardsPosters and wallet cards are available by contacting the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. |
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Valuing Our Values - Team DevotionsA series of team devotions to help unpack our values. The suggestion is you use one a month to create a 'value of the month'.
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Who are we? (Our Values) sermon and study seriesSeven sermons and seven separate small group studies for understanding our Salvation Army values - who are we and what is the culture we want to see.
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Mission Plan ImagesDownload Mission Plan images: |
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The Army that brings Life ImagesDownload The Army that brings Life images:
Note: Please remember that all permanent building signage needs to be signed of by our Public Relations Department.
Small text banner - Single line logo with smaller text for use as an email footer, PowerPoint footer, etc.
Wide banner - Single line logo with Red Shield same size as text - for large text uses
Stacked logo - Red Shield with text below
Standard logo - Red Shield with two lines of text to the right |
