The 3-Year Vision Plan of Gaylord E-Free - It's BIG!

D.L. Moody once said, "If God is your partner, make your plans large!"  I love that quote and I believe it should be the attitude of every church.  After all, we serve a God who can do immeasurably more than anything we could ever ask for or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).

It is with this thought in mind that our church here in Gaylord, Michigan is embarking on a very aggressive 3-year Vision Plan.  It's big and it's all based on one foundational question - "How can we as a church meet as many people as possible right where they are over the next 3 years and help move them to where God wants them to be?"  Here are the main aspects of our 3-year vision plan:

We want to see our Classic Service enhanced by providing the technology to broadcast a video feed of the weekly sermon from our Gospel Center down to the Chapel.  Currently we have two Contemporary Worship Services each Sunday (9am and 10:30am) in our Gospel Center.  At 9am, we also have a Classic Service taking place down in the Chapel.  Currently, the Classic service has their time of worship and then they all walk down to the Gospel Center for the message.  We feel it would greatly enhance our Classic Service if they did not have this planned "intermission" and instead could watch a video of the sermon while they remain in the chapel.

We also feel it would greatly enhance our Classic Service if we hired a quality and talented worship leader who can lead this service each and every Sunday.  Currently we have a different volunteer leading the worship each week (I even do this once a month).  Having the right personality who is gifted in this area and who could lead the worship each and every Sunday would greatly enhance the quality and effectiveness of our Classic Service.

We also desire to saturate our community, our county, and all of Northern Michigan by using technology to expand our impact by taking our Contemporary Service to the airwaves through the internet, through radio, through television and through multi-site campuses.  It is our prayer and goal that in the next three years we will see all of these avenues being used here at Gaylord E-Free to effectively reach all of Northern Michigan.

For us to be able to properly produce the technology for these ministries, our 3-year vision plan also includes the hiring of a technology director.  This would be a person who is in charge of utilizing all of our equipment and editing video and putting together quality programs of our services that we can use in broadcast.

We also desire to enhance our children's ministry through the hiring of a qualified Children's Director who can oversee all of our Nursery through grade 4 ministries.  Our children's program is on the move and we are seeing record attendances both on Sunday mornings and in our Wednesday Night Kids' Ministries.  With a staff member dedicated fully to this age group, we feel we can see even a greater impact take place.

We also desire to expand our nurseries.  The majority of our growth as a church is in the area of young families.  Right now our 3-year old and under ministry takes place in two separate areas of our facility.  This expansion would allow us to bring these areas all into the same part of our facility and allow for continued growth.

We also desire to build a state of the art Youth Center on our campus that would be open evenings, weekends and during the summer.  This would give students all throughout our county a place to come, hang-out and find Jesus.  It would also allow us to take our current youth wing of our facility and change it into a more effective area for children's ministry.

We are also serious about seeing people connect.  We don't just want to draw a crowd, we want to see all who attend E-Free also become connected where they will experience spiritual growth.  It is our goal within 3 years to see 80% of the adults who attend E-Free connected through one of our Equip-U Classes or one of our Life Groups.

Speaking of connection, our 3-year vision plan also includes installing a cafe into our facility.  This will allow a place right within our facility where people can gather to connect.  With multiple styles and times of services each Sunday we often just pass each other in the hallway.  A Connection Cafe would allow people to do more than just routinely say "hello" while passing each other in the foyer.  This would produce a place designed for personal connection to take place.

At E-Free we believe that evangelism must be the engine that drives the church.  We have a very strong outreach and mission program that touches our community and our world in amazing and numerous ways.  We want to see that grow in intensity.  It is our goal within 3 years to see 20% of our annual church budget go to outreach and missions.  In 2012, 12% of our budget went to outreach and missions.  In 2013 we are upping that to 14.5% on our way to 20% within 3 years.

We are blessed at E-Free to have an effective counseling ministry with a full-time licensed counselor on staff.  We desire to see this ministry expanded with the hiring of a female counselor as well to help with counseling women and children.

We have a large and wonderful facility here at E-Free that is always in use.  Our Vision Plan also calls for us to hire a full-time facility director who can oversee the custodial and maintenance of our church as well as overseeing the security and scheduling of our facility.

Over the years there have been many areas of our facility that have needed repaired or updated that have been delayed over and over again.  It is our desire within the next three years to see our facility brought completely up to date.  In order to accomplish this and the other areas of our 3-year vision plan, we are looking to have a 3-year Capitol Campaign in order to finance these exciting and needed areas.

This is an aggressive plan for a 3-year time period but I believe that D.L. Moody was correct!  God is our partner!  So let's make our plans BIG!  I can't wait to see what God does!