Key Aims:
The Cayman Islands Conference has embarked on an evangelism strategy development and implementation process to achieve:
1. Breakthrough performance in annual membership growth
2. Improved membership retention rates
3. Diversity in our mission portfolio during the period: 2021 – 2023.
GENERAL OVERVIEW
The strategy process is informed by the I Will Go – Inter-America strategic plan, the evangelism SWOT analysis for the conference, the covid 19 context, and the demographic and psychographic analysis of the conference.
The development process entails creating a planning framework, designing a strategy template and drafting a plan with known decisions and trusted data to create the nucleus of a ready to implement strategic plan.
The plan is then expanded and refined through more extensive analysis of the four contexts mentioned above and widespread stakeholders consultation.
We have embarked on a lead-and-learn approach to the development of our evangelistic strategic plan.
This approach allows the conference to take steps to meet its known and current evangelistic goals while expanding the scope of our evangelistic focus, researching, learning, and building capacity towards a more fully developed evangelistic portfolio from 2021 and 2013.
Our main evangelistic strategy is described as I Will Go – Relational Evangelism which emphasizes the purposeful development of relational competencies among our members and embarking on a networked approach to engaging persons from multiple demographics.
Members will function in their networks as influencers for Christ while engaging in creative, planned, spontaneous, corporate, individual, direct and indirect activities, both online and in-person.
In 2021, the conference will focus on the following priorities:
• Using conventional and innovative methods to pursue the 2021 evangelistic goals.
• Defining what changes are to be introduced into our evangelistic portfolio to impact its 2022 and 2023 goals (while envisioning a long term approach).
• Use 2021 to research and train/equip the conference to execute the new approaches for 2022-2023 and beyond.
• Use 2021 to build capacity and resilience in our evangelism system.
• Identify various possibility ministries to be seeded and supported at both the conference and church levels by the fourth quarter of 2021 (while clarifying the relationships between ministries and established departments and the issues related to funding and the paced proliferation of ministries to prevent fragmentation).
• Train and empower persons to execute various possibility ministries.
• Strengthen our capacity to do online evangelism and social networking.
• Involve wider demographics of our membership in relational evangelism.
In 2022, the conference will focus on the following priorities:
• Recalibrating to ensure that evangelism remains Christ-centred, aligned with the Bible and infused with prayer and dependence on the Spirit.
• The efficient and effective execution of the actions that will pursue the goals and objectives that were hammered out in the strategic plan during 2021.
• Managing and adjusting the strategy to meet emergent changes while maintaining focus on the evangelistic goals.
• Taking a learning approach to evangelism – facilitating feedback and assessment from various stakeholders to create deeper insight about what should be maintained and what should be adjusted for the 2023 evangelistic calendar.
In 2023, the conference will focus on:
• Refining and executing the strategies employed over 2021 to 2022.
•Developing a new evangelism vision and set of strategies to meet the challenges and opportunities of 2024 – 2027.
• Total Membership Involvement.
• Membership accession via baptism.
• Retention / Discipleship
• Training /Equipping
• Online Witnessing
• Evangelizing youth and millennials
• Relational Health & Competencies
• Evangelizing the wealthy and highly educated.
• Evangelizing diverse people groups.
• Making evangelism an ongoing process (ministry) rather than events driven.
• Spirituality and devotional life as the key drivers of mission
• Financing evangelism and mission
• Rewards and appreciation for evangelistic service
• Breakthrough baptism results
• Improved rates of retention
AT THE CONFERENCE LEVEL
• Conference-wide mega evangelistic campaigns conducted online and in-person as per regulations.
• Specialized Ministries (Possibility Ministries)
AT THE LOCAL CHURCH LEVEL
• Personal Relational Evangelism
• Group Relational Evangelism
• Public Relational Evangelism
• Online evangelism driven by NOW volunteers – Network of Online Witnesses.
AT THE CONFERENCE AND CHURCH LEVELS
• Better relational skills
• Strategizing for breakthrough evangelistic performance
• Digital Evangelism
• Media and Communications
• Enhanced evangelistic preaching skills
• Better ability to reach diverse ethnic groups through cross-cultural relational evangelism.
• How to evangelise the LGBTQ community
AT THE LOCAL CHURCH LEVEL
• Equipment and infrastructure that are more suitable for online evangelism.
• Microphones, amplifiers, speakers
• High Speed Internet Service
• Tracts, books and digital flyers
• Streaming Services
• High quality online content.
• Slides and digital illustrations
• Flat Screens, high resolution projectors
• Digital Prospect engagement, management and distribution system.
• Contemporary PowerPoint Slide Templates
AT THE CONFERENCE LEVEL
• More accurate demographic and psychographic data.
• More accurate data regarding the felt needs within our communities.
• How to use date to better inform choices and priorities.
• How to better leverage our assets, goodwill and capabilities to optimize evangelism in Cayman.
• What and who are our biggest barriers to effective evangelism in our environment.
AT THE LOCAL CHURCH LEVEL
• More accurate data on evangelistic target groups and areas.
• More accurate data regarding the felt needs within our communities.
• How to use date to better inform choices and priorities.
• What and who are our biggest barriers to effective evangelism in our environment.
AT THE CONFERENCE LEVEL
• Prioritizing evangelism at the conference leadership and Executive Committee.
• Prioritizing the funding of evangelism in the budgeting process.
• Prioritizing evangelism strategy and performance at the pastors and directors meetings.
• Assisting churches to implements and manage their evangelism strategy.
• Ensuring the astute management of the evangelism strategy.
• All pastors and leaders modelling a grater passion for evangelism.
AT THE LOCAL CHURCH LEVEL
• Prioritizing evangelism at the pastoral and church board levels in the churches.
• Prioritizing the funding of evangelism in the budgeting process.
• Prioritizing evangelistic activities and initiatives above activities that are not mission driven.
• Ensuring the astute management of the evangelism strategy in the local church.
AT THE CONFERENCE LEVEL
• Disruption to global or national conditions.
• Adverse Legislation
• Poor planning and poor evangelism cycle management
• Lack of support from stakeholders
• Humanistic approaches (production line model)
• Loss of evangelistic talent due to migration
• Lack of adequate resourcing
• Destructive actions by people who hold power.
• Overloading – too many initiatives
• Growing secularism and religious apathy
AT THE LOCAL CHURCH LEVEL
• Evangelism gets smothered by other entrenched church activities that are not mission driven.
• High migration turnover of persons with the requisite skills and passion for evangelism.
• Failure to adequately fund evangelism.
• Competition among churches.
• Volatile and uncertain global and national conditions.
• Legislation that its adverse to mission.
AT THE CONFERENCE LEVEL
• Conference annual budget appreciation
• Collaboration with churches to fund large scale evangelistic event
AT THE LOCAL CHURCH LEVEL
• Annual church budget appropriation
• Annual conference budget appropriation
• Direct giving from local church members
AT THE CONFERENCE LEVEL
• Office of the President and Assistant To The President For Evangelism.
• The Conference Committee
• The Evangelism Council
• Personal Ministries
• Sabbath School
• Communications / Technical
NB. All other departments play supportive roles and engage mainly in indirect evangelism and occasional direct evangelism.
AT THE LOCAL CHURCH LEVEL
• Office of the Church Pastor
• Board of Elders
• Church Board
• Personal Ministries (Council)
• Sabbath School
• Communication / Technical
NB. All other departments play supportive roles and engage mainly in indirect evangelism and occasional direct evangelism.