Church Planting & Missionary Training Strategy
This team has been successful in making progress toward our goal of creating a nine-month program to assess, train, and deploy new church planters and missionaries. As part of this process, we have consulted with other organizations, including seminaries, Christian leadership development centers, and church planting organizations, to see what we can learn from them about how to best approach this process. We are now at the point where we are ready to submit a proposal to the CGN Executive Team and plan to have a full roll-out of the program by June 2021.
This program will use the local church as the “lab” and “sending” organization. You might think of this as a church planting internship program and intensive learning experience, which is catered to assess and meet the unique needs of each individual participant. We will take into consideration their experience, knowledge, and needs for training based on where they are at and where God is calling them to serve.
Creating a new program like this could be seen as competing with or undermining our existing Bible college system, which is not what we want to do. We have been in conversation with CCBC about how this training program will meet specific needs and how we would like to work alongside them for the furtherance of God’s Kingdom.
We are excited to see how this program will come together and how the Lord will use it in the years to come.
Leadership Care & Coaching Strategy
We are currently working to expand an online tool kit filled with helpful information for church planters and ministry leaders, and we see this as not only an ongoing resource to our network partners, but also an “on-growing” one as we continue to add more resource content. Additionally, we will begin recording monthly Leadership Care & Coaching Podcasts beginning in December 2020. These podcasts will be round-table discussions with a diverse group of pastors and leaders on a variety of practical topics that church leaders wrestle with every day. Several respected CGN leaders and pastors (both nationally and internationally) have committed to this project, and we are excited to have this resource available to the network beginning in January 2021.
Training & Encouraging Women in Ministry Leadership
In 2021 we are also excited to launch new initiatives and resources aimed to support Women in Ministry Leadership, through the efforts of a developing team spearheaded by long-time ministry leader and author, Brenda Leavenworth.
The team developing strategy to invest in women in ministry leadership are passionate about pouring into women. In developing resources and relationships, they maintain focus on the core aspects of CGN Vision: Proclaiming the Gospel, Making Disciples, and Planting Churches.
Three key values the team is working with in ministering to women in ministry are:
1. Her personal relationship with Christ.
2. Her personal relationships with others.
3. Her life in ministry, as a leader. The aim is to bring encouragement and training via content that reinforces women as spiritually healthy followers of Christ, enhances them in their diverse relational roles (such as marriage, parenting, friendships, congregants, etc.), and improves their ability to lead other women.
Expanding the Local Connectors Strategy
In the coming year, we hope to increase the number and coverage of our Local Connectors. It is our goal that every CGN church will know and be known by others in their context, and that this will lead to gospel-driven partnerships all over the world. We are also establishing a core support team. This team will train, counsel, and encourage our Local Connectors and be available to help in any way possible. We also hope to provide initial and ongoing training at our annual conference, as well as establishing a way to regularly share the amazing things that God is doing in different regions across the world.
We are excited to see the bonds between churches strengthened, and anticipate abundant fruit as we pursue the Lord together and serve him side-by-side.
Brand New and Useful Website Communications Strategy
Currently, our team is working on each paragraph, page, and picture on the new calvaryglobalnetwork.com, and we are excited about how the new site will be both informative as well as interactive!
As CGN continues to expand by God’s grace, the Communications Task Team will be working hard in 2021 to capture and convey the work of God’s Spirit to the ends of the earth. We look forward to some new initiatives to roll out in the new year!
Network Membership Streamline Strategy
Our heart is to create a network membership process that is primarily relational, while still being thorough and well documented. With that in mind, we have proposed a process to the Executive Leadership Team in which the pastor of a prospective CGN/CC church will enter into a series of meetings with the CGN Local Connectors in their area, with the purpose of building genuine relationship, while exploring the theological and philosophical positions of the pastor and the church. The Local Connectors would then make a unified decision on whether the prospective church is a good fit.
Our desire is that even after acceptance into CGN membership, those Local Connectors would continue as a network of vital resources and relationships for new church plants and existing churches within the Calvary Global Network. This will make the process of joining our network life-giving rather than burdensome, producing genuine connections between local CGN churches that leads to encouragement, accountability, and shared kingdom fruit for many years to come.
We are excited about the direction we are headed, and we look forward to seeing how the Lord will grow our family of churches in these coming seasons.
CGN Funding Strategy
Imagine what could be accomplished if hundreds of churches were to give willingly, joyfully, and beyond their ability to CGN to continue our work in informing, training, connecting, and church planting!
The Funding Task Team is committed to finding ways and means to make this happen. First, we are moving forward in making CGN its own legal operating entity of the State of California and the Federal levels. Secondly, we are encouraging our CGN partners to give financially to help CGN become self-sustainable apart from CCCM. Thirdly, we are in the midst of developing creative ways to generate funds. Above all, we pray God’s will be done as we seek and serve Him.
