GROW–Go Reach Our World. What does that mean? GROW is an opportunity for you to participate in evangelism all around our conference. Contributing to GROW helps fund evangelism in the Idaho Conference. Churches submit a wide variety of projects and events: evangelistic series with an evangelist, evangelistic series by the pastor or church members, depression recovery series, fair booths, community events like a Live Nativity, youth-led meetings, and more.
The Idaho Conference assists churches in their evangelistic outreach by providing financial resources. Currently, the Evangelism and Church Planting Committee has a goal of providing up to 45% assistance for evangelistic series that are considered reaping series, up to 30% for events like a Live Nativity and Easter pageants when the public is invited, and up to 30% for community awareness events such as cooking schools, community family events, stop smoking clinics, fair booths, etc.
The committee provides up to 65% assistance to our Hispanic churches and companies, which have had an aggressive evangelism plan for the past few years, including setting a goal for baptisms. Their philosophy is that evangelism is not an event, it is a lifestyle.
Note that each category’s percentage is listed as “up to x%.” Evangelism is an important part of the Idaho Conference annual budget; however, it is one of many important parts. The Evangelism and Church Planting Committee has experienced a delightful dilemma–more churches are requesting funds, which means that more churches are doing evangelism and outreach!
The dilemma comes because evangelism funding hasn’t been able to keep up with the level of requests. Funds are allocated at the normal percentages. For 2019, the committee applied a 10% across the board reduction. If a church doesn’t use their full allocation, unused funds are applied toward the end of the year to evangelistic series that have happened, to bring them up to the full allocation.
We could provide the 45%/65%/30% funding if we had more funds. That’s where GROW comes in. We’re asking you to add GROW to your contributions. Make it a faith test with God. Has He let you down yet? When GROW contributions have reached the budgeted amount, anything over that is available to bring evangelistic series which did happen closer to the 45% and 65% funding. When we talk about GROW, we’re talking about GROWing God’s kingdom.