Key Stakeholders Consensus
OVERVIEW
Key Stakeholders Consensus is of critical importance in establishing clarity about the evangelism portfolio and gaining a sufficient degree of cooperation and support among the people who play central roles in evangelism.
Absence of key stakeholders consensus significantly raises the risk of conflicting views and priorities that could lead to disengagement or other unhelpful actions among stakeholders.
Key Stakeholders:
- 1. The members of the church.
- 2. Pastors and lay workers
- 3. Administrators and directors at all levels
- 4. Community Members
- 5. Service providers and customers
- 6. etc
- 7. etc.
STAKEHOLDERS CONSENSUS
CONSENSUS ON THE PRIORITIZATION OF MISSION
Administration and Executive Committee
The division administrators commit to the prioritization of mission in their roles as principal leaders, facilitates, enablers, and managers of the affairs of the Cayman Islands Conference.
The conference administrators commit to modelling a strong passion for mission by their personal involvement and support of mission initiatives throughout the conference.
The Executive Committee commits to giving adequate time and attention to evangelism and mission at its duly called meetings.
Pastors and Departmental Directors
The pastors in the Cayman Islands Conference reaffirm their call to ministry and commit to the prioritization of the mission of the church in the discharge of their duties at the local church level and at the conference level.
Departmental directors commit to the prioritization of mission and pledge to spearhead and support direct and indirect mission activities in the conference.
Departmental directors agree to work harmoniously together with fellow departmental directors and their church counterparts to foster the advancement of mission initiatives throughout the conference.
Bible Workers and Lay Evangelists
Bible workers and lay evangelists commit to the prioritization of mission throughout the Cayman Islands Conference.
Bible workers will faithfully dedicate time and effort to personally participate in reaching others for Christ during evangelistic series and also on an ongoing basis, as God provides opportunities to do so.
Lay evangelists commit to actively participate in one or more evangelistic outreach activity annually.
Churches and School
All members of churches and organized companies in the Cayman Islands Conference commit to the prioritization of mission at the local church level while giving support to the mission activities of the entire network of churches in the conference, where feasible.
Church boards and personal ministries counsels agree to the prioritization of mission in the local church.
Church boards commit to making mission a main agenda item at its scheduled meetings.
Cayman Academy commits to Christ-centred Christian education that prioritizes mission in its regular activities and bi-annual weeks of prayer.
CONSENSUS ON PURPOSE, PROCESS AND TERMINOLOGIES
Purpose
The principal aims of embarking on a strategic approach to evangelism in the Cayman Islands are:
1. To achieve sustainable breakthrough performance in membership growth.
2. To improve members retention rate
3. To create a coherent but diverse evangelism portfolio that is used at both conference and church levels.
Breakthrough performance means achieving sustainable outcomes in one or more core performance index or indices that are significantly above and beyond historical performances or marginal improvements in that index or those indices in comparable contexts (eg. pandemic or pre-pandemic and post-pandemic contexts).
It may also entails achieving a new dimension of performance that adds high value to the organization.
Breakthrough performance may be measured quantitatively or qualitatively and may be related to products, services, processes, etc.
Breakthrough performance is the results of people thinking and acting in new ways and resources channeled in better ways to deliver significant improvement to the organization.
It is achieved by assessing and arresting the ORGANIZATIONAL DRIFT within its environment. It requires infusing new energy, effort, resources and capabilities into the organization to create momentum that will pull it from its drift mode or drift path.
Momentum is both the product of change and a catalyst for more changes that can create a better path to the organisation’s terminal goal.
Simplified Strategy Development Process
1. Stakeholders Consultations and Consensus
2. Gathering Data
3. Analyzing Data
4. Formulating the Plan
5. Communicating
6. Implementing
7. Evaluating and Revising
8. Continued Stakeholders Consultations
Terminologies
For the purposes of this strategy development and implementation process, we accept the following working definition or terms to build clarity and consensus:
Goals: Long term or ultimate desired outcomes to which effort is directed.
Objectives: Measurable, specific or tangible subsets or portions of a goal to which effort is directed.
Strategy: A coherent set of actions with a methodology that seeks to enable a desired outcome, even when faced with constraints.
CONSUS ON DEPARTMENTS AND MINISTRIES
What is the difference between a church department and a church ministry?
A church department is a sub-sector of a church organization that is charged with carrying out specific functions within the organization.
A ministry within a church is an ongoing set of formal/informal activities designed to meet specific needs and interests within a community over time. Ministries function in the interest of mission, directly or indirectly.
Formation of Ministries
Ministries that are formed organically at the church level by persons with shared interests and passion for a defined purpose enjoy significant support from within the ministry groups that helps to make those ministries sustainable.
Ministries within the church should seek the blessings and endorsement of the church.
Institutions may also seed the formation of key ministries to fulfil critical needs that are not being addressed organically.
How are church ministries to be led and funded?
Ministries should have the consent of the church.
Each ministry in the church is to have a leadership team that is accountable to the organization at the level at which the ministry functions (Church, Conference, etc.)
Leadership of each ministry should be knowledge driven and should be directly or indirectly related to mission.
Leadership of ministries should embrace a participatory, inclusive, transparent and servant leadership style.
Ministries should strive to avoid regular conflict with the programs of the church and should not undermine the institutional wellbeing of the church.
Ministries must comply with the law and upheld the high ethical standards, beliefs and ethos of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Most Ministries should be self-funded and donor funded. Proper due diligence and financial oversight must be upheld at all times.
Each church should build in an appropriation to assist with some ministries.
The conference should make an annual appropriation to assist with some of the major ministry initiative in the conference.
Which mission related ministries suggestions should be seeded or prioritized at the conference / church levels?
• Solid Rock Ministries
• Ministry to persons from the Philippines
• Ministry to local Caymanians (2 Pilot Projects)
• Ministry to Indians (* level to be determined)
• Ministry to Millennials
• Diving Ministry (Church Level)
• Food Interests (Church Level)
• Construction Ministry (Conference Level)
• Care-givers Ministry (Church Level)
• Etc.
CONSENSUS ON RELATIONSHIPS, ROLES, FUNCTIONS AND BEHAVIOUR
The Cayman Islands Conference functions as the main coordinating, enabling and anchoring hub in the network of relationships among Seventh-day Adventist congregations that unite to fulfil mission in the Cayman Islands.
NETWORK OF CHURCHES
CAYMAN ISLANDS CONFERENCE
Facilitates the collaboration, communication and coordination of evangelistic activities among churches in synergistic ways.
Keeps the churches motivated and anchored to a shared mission.
Provides evangelism training and resources to the pastors and churches.
Collects resources from the churches and redistributes resources to the churches based on their needs and potential to contribute to the overall success of the network at particular points in time.
Demonstrates trust in the commitment, capabilities of the pastors and members.
Models excellence in innovation, management, strategy and execution.
Hosts high impact mission events that are beyond the scope of any one church or group of churches in the network.
How do conference departments function as a part of this network of churches?
Collaborate with administration and lead evangelistic departments to execute conference led evangelism strategy.
Collaborate with other departments to support indirect evangelism at low overall cost and complexity.
Provide mission training for local church counterparts.
Create a hub for sharing best practices and bottom-up mission strategies from the local churches within the network.
Yield to the greater good and seek synergies when departmental plans cannot be reconciled with significant mission activities.
Provide reports to the administration, committee, and constituency.
How do local churches and their members function as a part of this network of churches?
Commit to the shared evangelistic mission and goals of the entire Cayman Islands Conference.
Cooperate with the conference in every reasonable and advantageous way to maximize the overall performance of the conference rather than selfishly pursuing individual interests.
Provide the conference with resources to redirect and redistribute.
Provide talents that can be directed as the needs arise in various sections of the network.
Spur innovation and expansion of the network.
Collaborate with other churches within the network when useful.
How do the local church departments function as a part of this network of churches?
Each church should identify which departments will take the lead in direct evangelism each year (eg. Personal Ministries, Sabbath School, etc.)
Other supporting departments should not compete with the lead evangelistic departments, generally, but play enabling roles to the main evangelistic thrusts while participating more in indirect evangelism.
Local church departments should work closely with corresponding conference departmental directors in support of mission both at the conference level and local church level.
With the support of the pastors, perform cross collaboration with similar church departments in the network to share best practices.
How do pastors and Bible worker function as key hubs in this network of churches?
The pastor functions as the primary hub or link between the church and the conference.
The pastor builds trust, synergy and foster strong ties between the conference hub and the churches.
The pastor helps the conference to create its overall evangelistic goal and works faithfully with churches to help to achieve each local church goal and the overall goal of the network of churches.
Pastors inspire members to a God encounter-driven participation in mission.
Pastors and Bible workers play key training roles in the network
What personal and professional expectations do the pastors/Bible worker have of the conference as they serve in the network of churches?
• To be adequately resourced to perform online and in-person evangelistic activities.
• Strong assurance of support and goodwill from the conference.
• Support for the churches that have full-time Bible workers.
• Increased funding of evangelism to support local churches.
• Equipment replacement cycle a minimum of every 2 years.
• Evangelism equipment and book subsidy to be provided consistently. Also help in sourcing relevant resources.
CONSENSUS REGARDING THE EXPECTATIONS REGARDING LAY EVANGELISTS
• Training and refresher sessions on an annual basis.
• Opportunities to utilize and develop their talents and experience locally and abroad.
• Appreciation, affirmation and support of pastors and conference.
• Evangelism enabling resources and tokens.
• Providing leading evangelists with access to equipment.
• Complete SDA Bible Commmentary Set + Handbook
• Lay evangelists to be ranked based on performance. Performance incentives to be stratified based on ranks.
• Lay evangelists are expected to consistently participate in mission activities (personal, group and public evangelism).
CONSENSUS ON MOTIVATION AND REWARD SYSTEMS
• Affirmation and appreciation to church members
• Affirmation and appreciation services and tokens to lay workers
• Sponsorships
• Centurion awards
• Church goal achievement incentive for pastors.
CONSENSUS ON FUNDING EVANGELISM
• Annual church budget appropriation
• Annual conference budget appropriation
• Direct giving from local church members
How do we fund conference initiated evangelistic activities?
• Conference annual budget appreciation
• Collaboration with churches to fund large scale evangelistic events.
• Establish and Evangelism Support Investment Fund
CONSENSUS ON ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION
AT THE CONFERENCE LEVEL
The evangelism strategy is to be reviewed and evaluated bi-monthly so that adjustments can me made to align the strategies and actions with contextual changes.
Every year, the evangelism council is to provide the conference with a written evaluation of the evangelistic strategy.
This evaluation should provide recommendations to address weaknesses and enhance strengths of the evangelism system.
Develop and utilize an evaluation framework for the conference
AT THE CHURCH LEVEL
The local church’s personal ministries counsel should do an evangelism evaluation report every two months. That report should be sent to the church board for review.
Recommendations should be made by the board every two months regarding how to enhance the local church’s evangelistic performance.
Every 6 months the local church’s strategic should be recalibrated to reflect changes that emerge over the past 6 months.
Develop an evaluation framework for the church