Evangelism strategies used by most of our city churches have not reached large numbers of the cities’ populations, and many once large city churches have closed or are nearly vacant.

In October 1997 Bishop Cornelius L. Henderson named Clarke Campbell-Evans, Miami District Superintendent, to lead a blue ribbon task force that will address reaching the city populations of our conference for Christ. In March 1998 Dr. Randy Nugent, General Secretary of the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM), at the request of Bishop Henderson, met with the cabinet and members of the task force to share how GBGM can partner with the conference in this effort. Dr. Nugent encouraged us to prepare a plan and submit a grant request to fund the plan. The General Board gave the conference a $20,000 planning grant to develop the plan.

One of the first actions was to secure the services of the Rev. Gene Parks, a highly successful and respected urban minister, now retired, to guide the task group in its work. Through much study, reflection and discussion, a number of conclusions were reached, including: 1) any plan must be undergirded with prayer and guided by the Holy Spirit: 2) the plan must be inclusive of the multi-cultural environment that exists in our cities; 3) every Christian is called to be a missionary and every church a mission ministry; 4) our witness must be for the whole person; 5) marginalized people do not easily go to traditional churches; 6) unchurched people are easiest to reach through house church strategies; and 7) trained lay missioners are the frontline evangelists.

The City Ministries Plan submitted to GBGM envisions both established city churches, as well as new ones, organized on the principle of several house churches or faith communities per church being led by trained lay missioners. Each parish church will have an appointed pastor who is a mentor to the lay missioners, meeting with them weekly for training, inspiration and encouragement. In many instances the appointed pastor will be bi-vocational and will gather the house churches for prayer on a weekly basis. Finally, the plan envisions a district coordinator implementing the strategy for at least the first three years.

Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa are the initial cities included in the grant proposal. GBGM will decide in March whether to provide the grant. If fully funded, the grant amount will be $2.5 million. The conference will begin to implement the plan in June 2000.