Kevin MacGregor, who's quickly becoming a sort of "Executive Director" for Connections, has worked faithfully to lay the groundwork for our first year development strategy. We are working to develop the strategies for our three core areas of focus as a portable church:
(1) Website
(2) Worship Services
(3) Community Interaction - internal (Connections Cafe and Connections Groups) and external (community services)
When we take a step back we've already gone through several stages:
- Idea (should a new church be launched in North London?)
- Study and Prayer (actual needs and leading of God)
- Implementation (organize, fund raise, search for leader)
- Installation (beginning the actual mission)
Or to put it simply: we've gone from a vision to a reality- from the dream of launching a new church, to actually seeing people gather for worship, study, fellowship, service and outreach. It sounds so simple when you put it into one sentence, but it's been a ton of work and prayer!
But now, with a clear mission and a little momentum, we are ready to fully implement a strategy for development. This will allow us to do several things:
- We can prioritize and track our growth.
- We can evaluate based on our plans and what actually starts to unfold.
- We can gather resources.
Let me put it this way- our dream was not fulfilled the day we held our first public worship service; our dream simply became visible to the community. Now we begin to invite the community to get on board and become the flesh and blood that fulfills our hopes and dreams.
We are also going to invite people, churches and organizations to invest in this mission. In sum, we hope to gather a lot of support and turn that around into becoming a self supporting and "church planting" church in three years.
Few new churches reach this level in such a short time. We just hope to be one of the few, and we'll try to do everything we can to make that happen with God's leading.
Below are the sessions we have scheduled for the church community:
Developing A Media Strategy
When: Thursday, October 18th (7:00pm to 9:00pm)
Where: The Navigator's
Audience: All Interested
Agenda: To educate, share media examples, provide a couple of guest speakers on audio and multimedia, and capture a list of what we would like to do at Connections
Objective: To develop a list of strategic elements for possible adoption at Connections
Series Development Strategy
When: Thursday, November 1st (7:00pm to 9:00pm)
Where: TBD
Audience: All Interested
Agenda: Walk-through an outline of a series development model, discuss, modify and gather ideas that might benefit series development planning
Objective: To develop a list of strategic elements for possible adoption at Connections
Community Service Model
When: Thursday, November 15th (7:00pm to 9:00pm)
Where: TBD
Audience: All Interested
Agenda: TBD (i.e. discuss the process of how Connections might discern what community services to dive into...)
Objective: To develop a list of strategic elements for possible adoption at Connections
Developing A Six Month Plan
When: Thursday, November 8th (6:30pm to 9:00pm)
Where: TBD
Audience: Leadership Team
Agenda: Take the strategic elements from sessions- discuss them and prioritize them
Objective: Arrive at a plan outlining specific incremental changes we will make month-by-month, service-by-service over the next six months.
Sharing The Six Month Plan
When: Thursday, December 13th (7:00pm to 9:00pm)
Where: TBD
Audience: All of our attendees/members
Agenda: Share our Six Month Plan with everyone involved or interested in Connections Community Church
Objective: Share the vision and plans of Connections Community Church over the next year.
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