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UPCOMING EVENTS
God's Plan For Sharing
As a part of our of our State Convention Evangelism Strategy, we have adopted the national evangelism initiative of GPS (God's Plan for Sharing). You will find information, instructions and resources here.
Websites
- Language resources for Chinese, Korean and Spanish
- The vision and main national website for GPS is full of information and resources, at: GPS2020.net
- GPS DOCUMENTS
Background
A formal presentation unveiled GPS a the 2008 SBC annual meeting in Indianapolis. It's a big God sized endeavor by Southern Baptists to reach the United States. It's a four element plan of Praying, Sowing, engaging and Harvesting with a goal to pray for and give a gospel witness to every person in North American by the year 2020!
Every Believer Sharing, Every Person Hearing by 2020
Bi-Annual Themes
Every other year leading up to 2020, we in New England and all over North America will endeavor to hold theme actions for those years. Each action continues the process of seed sowing and sharing the gospel to every person.
- For 2010: Across New England (Sow seed)
- Proposed for 2012: Reaching Across N.E. ( Attractional Events)
- Proposed for 2014: Serving Across N.E. (Serving the Community)
- Proposed for 2016: Sharing Across N.E. (All SBC members pray for 3)
- Proposed for 2018: Start Something Across N.E. (Start New Ministry, group or church)
There are a number of elements to the GPS 2010 Across North America that are distinctively New England for which we would like you to know. The impact of this bold saturation sowing campaign has already been felt. We piloted this project Easter of 2009 in five areas and the Lord blessed in each case with an increase in visitors as well as church members prayerwalking their neighborhoods. All this was without the other media pieces that will be employed this coming year. We believe that the methods of this initiative are sound, transferable to any context and useful as a methodology for many years to come.
As the aspects of resourcing this effort Across New England are a bit more challenging because of the economy and the lostness we meet each day here, the Lord is weaving together resources from several sources to enable and even increase our effort. Because of this, the BCNE will be able to supplement the efforts of every church in order to make this affordable to all.
It is very important to recognize the two most important elements to this effort. The power of prayer, particularly your church members being mobilized to pray for specific people, homes and neighborhoods as well as the power of multi-message marketing. Multi-message marketing means that the more often a person sees a message in their locality, the greater the response to it. A person or family having their household prayed for, seeing a TV ad, hearing a radio spot, seeing a yard sign or banner in front of your church, then will be more positively drawn to the invitation left on their doorknob. Both of these elements create a deeper impact to a seed being sown.
5 Step Plan
What is the overall plan for Across New England 2010? It is a simple 5 step plan which many churches already, in many ways, practice annually:- 3 week media saturation featuring the tag-line “Find It Here” prior to Easter (TV- we are running ads on cable on the New England News Network and the New England Sports Network in March, banners, yard signs etc.)
- Participating churches request and use address lists of their neighborhood requested from the BCNE (from the "Mapping Center") to map out neighborhoods & use for prayer walking
- Churches Prepare their church for visitors & Prepare their Community through Prayerwalking & Social Internet Media
- Participating churches saturate their community with a clear bag containing the “Find It Here” gospel presentation and a church invitation to attend an Easter worship service
- Churches follow-up afterward through newcomer Bible studies and groups
1. In the NAMB GPS Across North America Pastor’s / Church Guide, it states, “Create prayerwalk routes. These will be used later for distribution in gospel saturation.” The BCNE would like to make available a very effective resource for your church to accomplish this aspect. We are generating neighborhood address lists of names through the resource: Mapping Center . With this your church can create a list of all the residents names on particular streets you wish to prayerwalk as well as mailing labels for follow up throughout the year. This enables you to pray for households by name. You may request resident name lists for specific neighborhoods through the BCNE Evangelism office.
2. We are using more affordable media elements like small invitation cards, Yard Signs and Facebook in order to increase the amount of messaging into the local community around your church. We will offer these at cost to churches willing to place them and collect them (the yard signs) after the campaign.
3. In the NAMB GPS Across North America Pastor’s / Church Guide it states, “Develop an Invitation to the Easter Service at Your Church…” We are strongly encouraging New England churches to only have 2 pieces of literature in the doorknob packet: The Find It Here Gospel card and a quality color invitation cards from your church. Any more material added to the packet will ensure that it is thrown away instead of read. We have resources to help you with your church printed piece if this needed.
4. Within the timeline (see below), we in New England would like to challenge churches to make use of an increasing popular technology called social networking using such internet & mobile phone applications like Facebook and Twitter. During that week, church members familiar with the tools, would commit to sharing invitations to Easter service with their friends and family as well as the FindItHere.com website.
5. Lastly, we will make available to churches quantities of a business sized mini-invitation card with the FindItHere.com website for distributing to co-workers, restaurants and to any other place a card could be left in the week of March 27. These will be available free to order printed through the internet with a customized back containing information like:
You are welcome to join us for Easter Services
At XYZ Church
At XX:XX am time
XYZ Main St.
XYZ Town/City
TIMELINE
Easter of 2010 – Across New England
• March 1-19 Pray & Promotion
• March 20 Prayerwalking New England & Social Media Campaign
• March 27 Door-to-Door Distribution along with community wide distribution of the business sized FindItHere.com card
• April 4 Easter Sunday
• April 11-May 2 Five-week Follow-up