Church Sustainability Forums - General Info & Update (April 07)

Vision for the Church Sustainability Forums

The church sustainability forums aim to assist Cambodian pastors build self-sustaining, growing churches that impact their communities for the kingdom of God.

We do believe that the Cambodian church has the ability to break out of the donor-support cycle and become self sustaining financially. And we also believe that the Cambodian church can reach and be a part of the emerging middle-class.

To achieve this goal, we believe the immediate need is in building capacity, strengthening the relationships between pastors and their key church business people, and in facilitating learning and spiritual growth through mentoring relationships.

Building towards the vision:
With the goal of sustainability in mind, we have established a pilot program including weekly mentoring sessions and a schedule of monthly training forums that seek to:
• Assist pastors and their church businessperson build strong relationships
• Build the capacity of both pastor and businessperson through practical training
• Provide relational support through a local expatriate business and pastoral mentoring program.

Through the mentoring relationships and the monthly forums we will be helping both the senior pastor and their church businessperson build sustainable organisations by applying kingdom principles to their respective organisations.

Update on the Forums:
We commenced the pilot forum program in March 07. This pilot program is planned to extend for a 12 month period initially - being limited to a maximum of 4 churches (of which we are working with senior pastor/s and their key church businesspeople).

Currently, the pilot program includes a total of 12 participants (4 pastors, 8 business people) from the following churches in Phnom Penh:

- New Life Fellowship (Ps. Jesse McCaul and Ps. Leang Samdy)
- Russey Keo Baptist (Ps. Toun Kakda)
- Victory Life Centre (Ps. Jimmy Lu)
- Home Centre Church (Home based outreach to university students - led by a leadership team currently)

We are also very blessed to have four locally based expats who are capable and well experienced in their respective areas of expertise, and have committed to fulfill either a pastoral or kingdom business mentoring role within this pilot forum program.

Some pics from the April forum in which we covered the subject of mindsets and attitudes to financial stewardship...






Following review and evaluation - we intend to extend the year 1 forum schedule to include a new group of participants.

Participants who undertake year 1 of the forums will be considered for a year 2 forum program focusing on spirit inspired business planning. In entirety - over the year 1 & 2 schedule of forums, we aim to cover teaching on the elements of building a spiritual enterprise, business planning and inputting a biblical and Holy Spirit guided formation of a business plan (relevant to the cambodian church business person); and elements of church growth and leadership, vision, and sustainability for growth-oriented churches (relevant to the cambodian pastor).

Training in the monthly forums is provided by a combination of local and overseas speakers that have held and do hold very high positions in large Corporations and growing churches, and some are experienced Christian entrepreneurs who have founded and built their businesses on what they have been led by God to do.

If you would like to be involved in this exciting program - please contact Mark directly on mark.dennert@cccw.org.au