Instead of closing its doors as a dwindling congregation of aging German descendants this congregation was revamped recently through a merger with a small, newly planted congregation of younger immigrant families from the Caribbean, making it multicultural, intergenerational and hopeful overnight. My own prayerful reflections as the pastor, on a way forward for Trinity under these circumstances of rapid change led to the first part of the project. This was a tedious process to unearth the true meaning of mission and the role of the church and the discovery of three things, namely missio Dei theology, the missional church movement, and the idea of reductionism of the gospel message.

The natural progression from here, and hence the second accomplishment of this project is an analysis of Trinity's present ministry practices to recognize the shortcomings there, in contrast to the examples of Christ's earthly ministry of service as we find them in the canonical Gospels. Having laid a finger on these shortcomings and on authenticity in church vocation the next step would be to craft tools to shift the paradigm at Trinity.

This project is an attempt to define a way forward for the church, to articulate the reason for a new direction and to lay down a method to initiate the transition. It does acknowledge that the process of getting the congregation to recognize its present shortcomings and to fully grasp the meaning of missio Dei and to develop a desire to become missional must be an ongoing one, perhaps over years, and should take many forms. It also discusses several paths that can be taken if there is change. It also reports on three activities that the church has been involved in that indicate that it is heading in the right direction.