The next ASA Annual General Meeting will be held at Convention on the afternoon of Friday December 9.

If you are interested then in tertiary ministry in Australia then please consider attending this meeting to show your interest in being involved with supporting and facilitating tertiary ministry across Australia. Being on the ASA Executive is an excellent way to build and refine leadership skills that translate into many other areas of life.

As required by the constitution we have announced the agenda below:

Opening remarks and devotional

Reports
Local Communities/Regions
President’s
Treasurer’s

Election of new officers

President
Vice-president
Treasurer
Secretary

The next ASA Annual General Meeting will be held at Convention on the afternoon of Friday December 10.  We will be working hard to ensure that it is streamlined and enjoyable.

One of the things that needs to be done is electing Executive officers for 2011.  If you are interested in being involved with supporting and facilitating tertiary ministry across Australia, get in contact with us.  Being on the ASA Executive is an excellent way to build and refine leadership skills that translate into many other areas of life.

We are required to announce the agenda for our AGM in advance:

• Opening remarks and devotional
• Reports
  • Local Communities/Regions
  • President’s
  • Treasurer’s
• Constitutional amendments
• Proposal to develop Advisory Board
• Election of new officers
  • President
  • Vice-president
  • Treasurer
  • Secretary

The proposed Constitutional amendments are intended to make this document more relevant, and have been developed from the discussions of the Sustain ASA Retreat. Apart from a few cosmetic fixes, and some deletions of articles that have not been practised for many years, the updates reflect the following main ideas:

1. We are proposing to change the language from “Societies” to “Communities” throughout the document.  This reflects the language in our well-written Mission Statement, and also opens the way for ASA to engage with a wide variety of Tertiary Student Ministries that are happening around Australia.  These activities and experiments (such as on-campus church plants, tertiary-focussed local churches, semi-formal student societies, etc) are changing the face of tertiary ministry, and ASA needs to recognise them and remain relevant to them.  Traditional Local Societies are still a good thing, but will probably only ever thrive in the few largest cities.  By changing our constitutional language to “Communities”, ASA is positioning itself to remain at the pinnacle and cutting edge of Tertiary Ministry in Australia.
2. We are proposing to relax the requirement that ASA Executive members be current students.  The amendment expands the acceptable status to “within 5 years of being a student”.  This change grows out of the recognition that ASA struggles to maintain consistency with the traditionally high rate of leadership turnover.
3. We are proposing to remove a number of Executive positions from the Constitutional list.  Such portfolios can still be held when the Executive chooses to function in that way, but recent experience has indicated that it is often just as easy to “contract” certain jobs (like web-design or even Yr 12 packs) to people who may not want or need to sit on regular Executive meetings.  We also recognise that it is often more valuable to have students involved in leading Local Societies or Chapters or other on-the-ground ministries.
4. We are proposing to add a list of general functions that the Executive exists for.  These grow out of a list of reasons for having ASA at all.  This list was created by on-the-ground local tertiary ministry representatives at our Sustain ASA weekend, and is included in the St Albans Declaration.  Including this in the Constitution helps provide direction and affirm the functions of ASA.

A copy of the ASA Constitution outlining all of the proposed amendments is can be downloaded and read in detail.

On the weekend of October 16-17, ASA hosted a weekend retreat aimed at ensuring the long-term sustainability of our Adventist Students Association.  Invited delegates representing Adventist tertiary ministries around Australia gathered at a conference centre near St Albans, just an hour north of Sydney.

A major purpose of the weekend was to facilitate dialogue between the various communities and ministries, and a lot of ideas were shared.  These conversations continued over shared meals and in the minibus, strengthening valuable social networks.

The other primary job of the Sustain ASA Retreat was to identify ways that we can improve the function and continuity of ASA.  It was obvious that we need to expand beyond the traditional Local Society model, and strive to be relevant to the full spectrum of tertiary ministry initiatives happening around the country.  Happily, delegates were agreed that a national association is worthwhile.

All of the participants agreed on the following as a summary of the weekend’s discussion, and we can now use this document to help guide ASA into the future.  Continual conversation will be required to ensure that the national association of tertiary student communities remains relevant and beneficial.

St Albans Declaration

October 17, 2010

We, representatives of tertiary ministry initiatives across Australia:

1. Have recognised the urgent need for tertiary ministry activities across Australia.
2. Affirm the initiative of the AUC executive committee to commit to university chaplains in each conference. We encourage conference areas who are unable to commit paid university chaplaincy resources to actively seek lay members who can operate in such a capacity until paid chaplaincy is arranged.
3. Resolve to strengthen the operations of ASA to enable it to:
   1. Allocate money to support tertiary ministry operations in regions lacking local financial support
   2. Facilitate a national tertiary student event
   3. Provide leadership training, networking, visioning, and planning
   4. Facilitate idea and resource sharing including a contact point for connecting people to tertiary ministry resources and expertise
   5. Provide advocacy for the interests of the Seventh-day Adventist church on university campuses and to provide advocacy for the interests of Seventh-day Adventist students to the general church.
   6. Maintain a database of tertiary students to facilitate communication and support of students moving between regions.
4. Recommend the appointment of a national-level paid secretary to support the administrative functions of the ASA leadership team. The administrative tasks are detailed in part point 3.
5. Recommend incorporating into the national-tertiary level administration a support level made up of graduates and other interested people to provide advice, resources and stability.
6. Encourage conferences to develop committees to provide the same role described in point 6.
7. Resolve to support a process of re-evaluation of the ASA executive with a view to streamlining the membership of the executive and renewal of the ASA constitution.

We love to talk about “Personal Salvation”.  The trouble is, this term never appears in the Bible.  Sure, there’s heaps of Salvation in there; but its never “personal”.

I wonder if this focus on “personal” salvation has made us inadvertently self-focussed?  I mean, many of us worry about our own salvation.  We come to church and converse over whether salvation comes through works or by grace, but we are always talking about our salvation.  It’s almost as if we are asking “what mush I do to be saved?”

There was a young man who came to Jesus with this exact question (see Luke 18:18-29).  Jesus lists off a few Commandments, and the man replies “I’ve obeyed all these commandments since I was young.”

I can hear him saying “I know about those rules, and I’ve been diligently following them my entire life.  I’m quite concerned, actually, about whether I’ve been trying hard enough.  You see, I’m constantly disturbed by the thought that I might not make it into eternal life.  I constantly examine myself, looking for anything that might jeopardise my personal salvation.”

And Jesus’ reply is shocking.

“There is still one thing you haven’t done. Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Jesus might be saying “I know.  I know how concerned you are about your personal salvation.  I know that it causes you to constantly be examining your life and holding it up against the rule-book.  I know all of that.  But what about all these other people?  I think it would be healthy for you to worry about them for a little while.”

As true followers of the self-sacrificing Jesus, maybe we should make the salvation of others our primary focus.  Shifting from “personal” salvation to “other-people-I-interact-with” salvation is not easy.  But it is biblical.

Remember Moses, when he returns from Mt Sinai to find the Israelites worshipping a golden calf?  God tells Moses he might destroy them all.  Moses pleads with God, and even offers his own life in exchange for the “salvation” of the nation.  Moses was not so focused on “personal” salvation, but on personal sacrifice.

Jesus had that same approach to life.  And to death.

So maybe we should stop asking the question “what must I do to be saved?” and start asking “how can I offer ’salvation’ to others?”  This might be salvation in the full spiritual sense, or it might be some other sort of “salvation”.  Jesus asked the rich young man to use his material wealth in a saving-of-others way.   Maybe we are called to save our neighbour from slavery, or poverty, or depression, or lonliness, or …

It would be ironic if this shift away from concentrating on “personal” salvation became the very thing that most assuredly guaranteed our Salvation.