General Board of Global
Ministries
UM Information
UM Reporter
Employment
Archives
Favorite Places
Florida Southern College
Bethune Cookman College
FL
UM Children's Home
 |
|
CHURCH DEVELOPMENT Conference Committee Adopts Five Year Strategic Plan By Charles W. Courtoy
Executive Director of Church Development
The Conference Committee on New Church
Development and Church Redevelopment adopted a five-year strategic plan at its Jan. 29-30
meeting. The outline of the plan is as follows:
Establish new Faith
Communities at the rate of five new chartered churches and five new fellowships (missions)
per year. There are currently 29 areas containing 6,000 or more people without a United
Methodist church within five miles or more. In addition, there is rapid growth of people
from other cultures who financially cannot support a self-sustaining chartered church, but
need a Christian fellowship to be discipled as Christians.
Redevelop (reenergize)
existing churches. Dr. Jack Stephenson is helping the committee develop a resource that
will enable churches to analyze the current results of their ministry in order to
strengthen/redirect their focus. In addition, the Revision tool from the Percept
organization will be available for churches to reorient their ministry to the populations
in their neighborhoods. A major innovation is envisioned for 2001 for at least one heavily
populated area that is highly diverse. This effort will involve all the churches in an
area approximately 10 miles in diameter collaborating together in a joint ministry
strategy.
Regional Mega Churches: The
Committee, working with the bishop and cabinet, will encourage and provide appropriate
assistance in the development of regional mega churches.
Funding: The Committee will
promote gifts and bequests and study the feasibility of a major funding effort to build
permanent sources of funding to help cover the expense of aggressive new church
development and church redevelopment.
Leadership: Recognizing that
clergy and lay persons who are spiritual learning leaders and who are focused on
congregational vitality are the key to church development, a variety of discernment
efforts focused on potential leaders of all cultures will be aggressively pursued.
Top
of this page