Gaylord
E-Free is a church with a purpose. We
desire to be used by God to meet as many people as possible right where they
are and help move them to where He wants them to be. At the beginning of this year, we launched
into a 3-year Vision Plan with the ultimate goal to saturate Otsego County with
the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to then let that bleed over into all of northern
Michigan.
This is a
vision that we believe God gave to us and He has already blessed us in opening
doors far ahead of our anticipated time-schedule. For example, our 9am service each Sunday
morning is now being aired live each on The Eagle, 101.5 FM.
Realizing that many who are attending E-Free are new to our church since we introduced our 3-year vision plan, here is a quick overview of what we believe God has called us to do. The vision plan focuses on the following areas:
The first
area is that of our worship services and technology. This will no doubt be the greatest way that
we can saturate our county with the Gospel.
The vision includes a technology upgrade with new lighting and cameras
that will allow us to broadcast the message down to the Classic service. It will also open doors for us to stream our
services on the internet and continue to utilize radio and even television to
meet and move people all over northern Michigan.
This
technology will also equip us with state of the art environmental projection
which will allow us to change the entire front of the auditorium in both our
Contemporary and Classic services into multiple scenes and displays. To be able to accomplish all of this and to
utilize this new equipment to its fullest potential, the vision plan also
includes the addition of a Technology Director to our staff
Another area
of emphasis in our vision plan is in the area of connecting people. We don’t just want to attract people to our church,
we desire to also see all of these people connected into our church. Our goal is to see 80% of our average Sunday
morning adult attendance plugged into a Life Group or into one of our Equip-U
Classes.
With
multiple services we know it will become more of a challenge to connect with
people on Sunday morning. That’s why our
vision plan includes the addition of a café here in our facility where people
can take time before, in between, and after services to connect with each
other.
A third area
of emphasis has been a focal point here at E-Free for decades and that is our
ministry to children and youth. Our
vision plan calls for the addition of a full-time Director of Children’s
Ministry. This is another area where God
is already at work as we are now just a few weeks away from introducing this
new staff member to our church family.
Currently
our nursery areas are in two separate locations in our facility. The vision plan calls to relocate and expand
our nurseries so they are all in the same location and are large enough to
handle the growth we are experiencing.
As a church
we are unique and blessed to have a counseling ministry that includes having a
licensed Christian counselor on our staff.
Our vision calls for this area to be expanded through adding a female
counselor to help minister to more woman, children and families.
Being
outward focused is the heart of our vision.
That’s why this plan calls for us to return to seeing 20% of all of our
offerings going
back out to into our community and around the world. In the same way that individuals are called
in Scripture to tithe their money, we see this 20% as a way our church tithes
from the resources God has blessed us with.
The final
area centers on our facility. God has
blessed E-Free with an amazing facility, but over the years the wear and tear
has taken its toll on our building. Our
vision plan calls for much needed maintenance and updating so that we can
continue to use our building to its fullest potential. Due to the increased usage and demand on our
building, we also are looking to add a facility manager to our staff who can
give full-time oversight to the stewardship of our building.
Through
making these steps of faith in these areas, we believe that we can fulfill our
purpose of meeting as many people as possible and moving them to where God
wants them to be. But to see this vision
become reality, we need you to be involved.
First, we
need you to pray. Nothing of eternal
importance happens apart from prayer.
The creation of this vision plan was bathed with prayer and we want to
be sure that its implementation is carefully wrapped in prayer as well.
One of the
things we ask you to pray about is how you can be involved. In the back foyer we have a Vision Tree which is
filled with green apples that represent areas of our vision plan as well as their
associated costs. As God leads, you can actually
pick one of those green apples through your gift for that item. Under each green apple is a red apple which
will visualize that God is taking the dream He gave us and turning it into
reality for His honor and glory
This vision
plan is aggressive and will challenge us as a church as it pushes us out of our
comfort zones. We believe that this is a
good thing because there is always a challenge between the comfort of where we
are and the potential of where we could be.
1 comment:
PTL it came across well... hopefully along with the brochure, attendees could see t the whole picture
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