Strategic plan to help our neighbours rebuild, restore and renew
Strategic plan to help our neighbours rebuild, restore and renew
26 August 2021
Colonel Garth Niemand, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands Territorial Commander, launched the Territorial Strategic Plan 2025 at a territorial leaders’ conference in July.
The Australia Territory’s nearest neighbour, the Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands Territory, has launched a strategic plan to take it forward into 2025.
Territorial Commander Colonel Garth Niemand unveiled the ‘Territorial Strategic Plan 2021-2025’ at a territorial leaders’ conference in Port Moresby in July, attended by 32 officers from around Papua New Guinea. The divisional leaders from the Solomon Islands, Majors Robert and Vanessa Evans, connected online.
The plan’s theme is ‘Rebuild – Restore – Renew – 2025’, with Garth also announcing a new territorial vision containing five key values: honesty, compassion, respect, creativity and order.
“As a sanctified people, we value honesty in the way we conduct our ministry and mission business; compassion in the way we respond to the needs of our world; respect in the way we treat each other and our communities; creativity in the way we encourage sustainability of resources; and order in the way we plan and implement our mission activities,” Garth said in his keynote address to the conference.
“These are the non-negotiables of the territory over the next four-plus years. This is our measuring stick, our standard.”
The groundwork for the plan had been done by retired former Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands Territorial Commander Commissioner Andrew Kalai in consultation with Territorial Headquarters cabinet and staff.
Garth told the conference The Salvation Army was “an army, not a charity” and “a movement, not a monument”. “You can do social work without evangelism, but you cannot do evangelism without social work,” he said. “In order to reach people that no one is reaching, you have to do things that no one is doing, but, in order to do things that no one is doing, you can’t do what everyone else is doing.”
He said that was the reason the territory had introduced this strategic plan.
“Our vision is not inward-looking,” Garth said. “Our vision is not about ourselves. It’s about others: The Salvation Army will actively rebuild, restore and renew where a broken world needs it most.
“Everything we are doing [in the territory] is not so that we can be a bigger or better Salvation Army but, rather, so that we can reach more people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and make a difference in the lives of more people in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. In the process, we will improve our systems, our methodology, our pastoral care, our financial position, our stewardship, our discipleship ... but all for the sake of the vision.”
Garth said the territory would also operate under four pillars: sanctification, service, sustainability, and strategy. Several goals would be outlined under each of those pillars.
“[This is] a God-sized challenge; a tough ask,” he said. “God knows that The Salvation Army here needs a corporate plan of action that will allow us to march forward and rebuild, restore and renew where a hurting world needs it most. It is a plan that can only succeed with God right in the middle of it, spurring us on and opening doors for us.”
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