Action Learning Plans

Glenn began the next exercise by emphasizing the need for SMART goals. Every goal should be a SMART goal as shown by the acronym. It should be Specific, detailed; Measureable, can test; Achievable, can be done; Realistic, for the situation; and Time-limited; when you want to achieve it by.

In the Action Learning Plan the participants were asked to make goals for their plans deciding the desired outcome, how it is measured, steps, point person, and any notes related to the goal.

Geyer Springs total outcome involves families already in ministry reaching out to communities to draw people in. It may be a way to get the unchurched involved in some church if not their own. They feel like they have set attainable goals, though they will be challenging.

Fellowship decided to make two charts - one for small groups and one for individual ministries. They want to engage their existing small group structure for effective discipleship. To do this they will identify a service champion, set specific goals, and let the congregation choose from various ministries. The average small group member will have been informed and invited to join in more opportunities in the Season of Service. The goal is that every member will experience the adventure of ministry.

Secondly, Fellowship plans to understand how they might do a better job of informing of what is going on ministry-wise. They will tell stories and then invite people to join. Fellowship feels good about their plan.

Summit's focus is on regional small groups. They intend to meet together again and put a plan together between now and when Palau is here in October. There will be three or four very clear steps that will include meeting with small group leaders with a plan for each. They want to mobilize 50% of small group people; they believe they can do this regionally through relational approach, having a greater impact.

Second Baptist's goal is to get people involved in all of the ministries which they have. In essence, they want to mobilize 450 people. One of the goals is to feed the homeless. They will try to get thirty people once a month for two hours a month to serve.

Strategic Planning Process in the Churches

The leaders in the conference have a responsibility to plan where the church needs to go and help people come alongside you in the plan. That is what we want to start in going through the Strategic Planning Process in the individual churches. This will include the current external ministry situation, a resource release timeline, where they want to be in 1, 3, and 6 months, and the critical path steps and tactics. Glenn wanted the churches to design their journey over the next six months to mobilize volunteers in the community.

Hoover has a ministry outreach called Black Community Development. Their current ministry situation is that they have a 7 day/24 hour ministry with various programs mostly focused on people serving the underserved families with children. They have ministries in gang-related youth, literacy, job readiness, and affordable housing. Their current external situation is that in the mid-town community where the church is a 12 Step Street Plan to revitalize the mid-town area. There plan is to organize the community, get information, identify partners to support in their area for journey to redevelopment, and identify clients. The three month plan is to engage partners in resourcing people, money, and expertise and plan for ministry movement to empower others to create a sustainable system. The six month plan is to review action plan.

Second Baptist Church's current ministry situation is that they have three ministries - homeless, evangelism, and Circle of Love with possibly 20% member participation. They are stuck in getting people out of the pews. The one month plan is to tell the stories more to the neighborhoods and in the homes. The three month plan is to invite people into ministry service, and the six month plan is to increase the 20% to 40% and recognize and celebrate volunteers.

Summit Church is considering that Luis Palau is coming to Little Rock. They want to focus on how to get people ready for that. The current ministry situation is that there are a lot of people not connected or directed, or they are burned out. The opportunity of Palau is that it could force the church to get motivated to train volunteer staff and to work with cross-cultural churches. There plan is to pray to the Lord of the harvest, identify key leaders - the positive deviants, help those leaders to invite people into mentoring and discipleship, meet with current small group leaders one on one and ask them to bring along key people to apprentice, share stories, and develop a plan to mobilize strategic service teams.

Fellowship Bible Church's mission is to equip and unleash Christ-followers to change the world through lives of irrestible influence. The idea of discipleship is usually just to train, but they want to get more people serving. The external situation is we have a new president focused on service and individual responsibility, the economic situation, and the increasing unity in the community. The current ministry situation is there is new energy in leadership. They also have many people involved in ministry, but there is a need for training. The plan is to pray, identify issues and opportunities, invite, train by telling stories, and TAFERR.

The Geyer Springs church's current ministry situation is that they have 2,350 in worship, 1,750 in Sunday school, a 6 million dollar budget, 35 total in ministerial and support, 1,000 serving, a good reputation, and great facilities. The current external situation is an unstable income, diverse racial make-up, middle to lower income area, and at least 50% unchurched. Their purpose statement is Building Lives, Building Families, and Reaching People. Their plan is to provide opportunities to whole family, small group assimilation into discipleship groups, GS Fest and Sharefest follow-up, and to continue the Upward program which is their number one program. They have been able to identify unchurched people through this program.

Building a Model to Mobilize People

We all know there is much work to be done in transforming Little Rock and Central Arkansas in a "Good Cities" community. We also know the foundation for this transformation is engaging and unleashing an unprecedented number of volunteers to serve and to demonstrate the hope of Jesus Christ.

Glenn asked the participants to build a model based on all they learned yesterday to demonstrate how their designated group envisions mobilizing a radical number of people - to have radical impact on the community - and exert a radical impact on the life of their congregation by the end of 2009.

The first group "tried to think outside the box" to create a model for any ministry usable to identify a need. It is based on "Stop, Start, Continue" evaluation that Don Simmons talked about. First the "Stop" is to do internal assessment to see where the church is overtaxed. Then, they would do an external assessment to see who else is doing something in a postive direction with which they can partner. Next, they would define success, identify and invite leadership, identify tasks and resources, identify and invite key folks like trainers and those already in the ministry, and bring people together to engage. There would be constant feedback to the planning team and to the church in which they would do the "Start, Stop, and Continue" evaluation. Stories would be going back to help invite people into the ministry. The arching principle is kingdom relationships. The potential with the model is that they do not need to create the ministry if it is already elsewhere. They would join them. It doesn't have to be all church people who are involved. It could be an opportunity to draw people in from the community. One of the norms would be discipleship that would be happening throughout process.

The next group focused on making a major impact on the community and the church. In the model, the church and people are represented in the circle. The church could be the local congregation or the church of the city. The places they can serve are at work or school, with homeless or prisoners, and in neighborhoods for examples. The guiding principles would be to pray; communicate to the church through sermons and storytelling; identify ministry opportunities such as big events, small groups, individually like tutoring; and spontaneously by the prompting of the Holy Spirit, beginning discipleship in the process; invite and identify people, T.A.F.E.R.R. as outlined by Don Simmons; fund; and evaluate by tracking and monitoring to see that discipleship takes place and leadership is raised up. They will know if the model succeeds or fails by how many people are involved in ministry.

The final group discussed race relations. Their thoughts came out of the 3rd Thursday prayer meeting downtown. They learned how the business community perceives Little Rock. Crime is a huge problem keeping people out and the school system and racial relations are problems. This group decided to focus on race relations. There are problems with race relations in this city. They want to create some shared experience with different races of this city. What if they went into the city and identified three or four locations where people could come together - white, hispanic, and black? They could set up a parkfest in the summer. It would send a message to the city that the church is serious about racial relations. It isn't going to happen at the picnic though. Before parkfest, they would need to plan an exchange of people in worship services. Then, there would be a practice picnic in the park in which the churches involved would come together for fun, food, prayer walk, and for community building activities that would include physical contact. Next, those people would invite their neighbors who are different from them to the parkfest. All this would be in preparation for the coming of Luis Palau in October, because this joining of races won't happen there if there hasn't been some preparation. They want to focus on relations more than race as is usually done. The barrier is that noone wants to talk about race. The guiding principle is creating situations where relatioships are formed.

Ray Williams added some information that could impact this plan. The season of service for Palau will be in July. The actual event is October 24. Child Care Evangelism who does outside Bible clubs and Good News Clubs in schools is bringing 200 college students to Little Rock from July 15 to August 1 to go out all over the city to do five day clubs partnering with the city and ending with a rally. Ray suggested having the parkfest after this in neighborhoods in which Bible clubs have worked and in September when the weather is cooler.

Some emerging themes that the participants of the conference discovered in all of the plans were as follows: vision that represents mobilization, engagement, need for identification, planning, leveraging existing successes by partnering with and not reinventing, positive deviant, new language that puts "church" things in common language, communication, shared experiences, revitalization personally and in the community, and anticipating barriers and planning to work around them.

Glorifying God by Randy Pate

Randy said he is normally an analytical thinker. He sometimes thinks the Christian life is a checklist, but it isn't. If it is a command, though, we are to be obedient. 1 Corinthians 10:31 says that "whatever you do, do all to glorify the LORD." Glorify means to make bigger, better, or more beautiful. As we do service, we make God look good - bigger and better.

1 Peter 2:17 says to glorify again. It tells us to do this in four ways, the first of which is to show proper respect to everyone. This means being a good neighbor. Randy doesn't know how the Good Samaritan felt about stopping and helping. It was probably an inconvenience, but he did it anyway. We have to ask, then, who our neighbor is. It is everyone worthy of dignity and respect.

The next way to glorify God is to love the brotherhood. This connotes church family. The greatest way to love God is to love each other.

Next, we need to fear God by being a good Christian. We fear him because when He is, I am who I should be. It is about allowing God to get into my life and surrender myself. It is a love relationship that affects me everyday.

Finally, we honor the king. We ought to honor the authority over us. We can't be a good Christian and be a bad citizen.

I want others to see my good deeds and glorify God.

Six Essential Elements in Investing in Volunteers by Don Simmons

There are six elements in investing in volunteers represented by the acronym TAFERR. The first of these is Training. This should be done just in time, just in place, fun, practical, transferrable, and by a "tell, show, and do." By "tell, show, and do," he meant that you talk to someone about how they do something, then you show them personally. Next, you actually have them do it, and you repeat this however many times is needed. We often make assumptions they know what they need to do. Train people for where you would like to be not where you are.


The next element is Affirmation. Acknowledge who they are not what they do. It is about their character and spirit not their competency. Colossians 3 and other verses say to encourage one another. Affirmation is best verbal and then written. "Thank you" is not affirmation.

Another element in investing in volunteers is Feedback. You guide and correct behavior with critiquing. Hebrews 10:24 says to "let us consider how we may spur one another toward love and good deeds"(NIV). There are three forms of feedback, one of which is compliments. Compliments are like soap bubbles. You can't hold onto them, and you can't pass them on. They don't necessarily help. We usually give compliments pretty consistently along with criticism which is the second form of feedback.

Criticism is like a baseball. It almost always leaves a bruise. People get defensive when get around that person. You can lose a volunteer quickly. The way to not get hit by balls is to get out of the field.

The third form of feedback is the critique. It is like a beach ball. You can hang onto it, pass it along, and you won't get hurt being hit by it. Let people know it is coming, asking them if it is a good time to talk about it. Always use the words "the next time..." Critique guidelines include asking permission, speaking directly to and privately, provide specific feedback on what could be done differently, and provide practical application.


The next essential element is Evaluation. If you do an evaluation, then USE them. An easy evaluation is the Stop, Start, Continue evaluation. You ask what we need to stop, what we need to start doing, and what we need to continue doing in training or whatever you do with the volunteer. This shows them that you value what they think and not just what they do.

Next is Recognition. This entails appreciation, validation, education, and commemoration. The best appreciation is always written. It isn't e-mail or mass-produced. Also, you should honor those that you want to volunteer. 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13 says "Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other"(NIV). Recognize teamwork as well.

Reflection is the final essential step. Do this by research and personally. This is where the word and work intersect. This is when you ask "So what" and "Now what?" C.S. Lewis said, " I made the experience, but I missed the meeting." You ask, "Where was Jesus in this work?" This reflection is the most valuable time spent with unpaid servants. If it matters, it will take time.

Discover the Treasure by Don Simmons

In Edgar Bronfman's book The Third Act: Reinventing Yourself After Retirement said, "The United States today possesses the fastest-growing, best-educated, and most vigorous population of older adults in the history of the world. The whole structure of volunteerism is about to be reinvented. There exists a virtual tidal wave of skilled professionals, talented individuals, and top drawer executives who are ready to do good.” We have a highly educated group of men and women moving into retirement. We need to reinvent how we engage them in volunteering.

Ephesians 2:10 is the foundation. We are "created in Christ Jesus to do good works." In 1 Peter 2:9-10 it says we are not just a volunteer but "a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God."

The Challenge is that the church has historically performed inadequately in discovering and unlocking the treasure found in the average member. Our systems of discovery are outdated, unrealistic, and cumbersome. And the church has looked for strategy in discovery which have proved to be dead ends.

The Process is assessment tools are only useful as supplements, not the primary resource. Nothing can replace the power of relationships. And changing the language can change the culture.

Watch your language. Change it from volunteer to servant, recruit to invite, placement to negotiation and agreement, supervision to support, retention to sustainability, recognition to acknowledgement, program development to people development, and volunteerism to experiential discipleship. We must shift our thinking from filling slots to fulfilling people.

How do we do this? The most effective tool is an intentional conversation doing just what Jesus did. You invite them personally to come alongside. Whether we admit it or not people want authentic relationship. The best discovery is through authentic relationship. Churches may not allow enough time and space for authentic relationships to flourish. Start the conversation with "Who am I," Who are you," and "What's your story?" People don't know how to articulate after the first words.

Don told the story about a woman he didn't know whom he asked if she could serve at a shelter. She told him repeatedly, "I can't." He finally learned that she had actually lived at the shelter. He should have gotten to know her first.

"How do you get them?" You provide them History, Heroes, Highs, and Hopes. And you listen with your heart. Listen with God's agenda in mind. Reexamine motives. Be ready to provide as you listen. If you cannot listen, you cannot lead. Small churches can particularly excel in listening.

When and Where do you engage? You engage people at a designated time, not on the fly with intentional timing in small group or individually during serving. It isn't an interrogation, trying to get them to cry, spiritual therapy, or a job interview. It is getting to know them.

Robert Greenfield from book Essentials said, "The best test and the most difficult to administer is this: Do those served grow as a person? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely to become servants?"

Keep your system for knowing people invisible. Ask them if you can write things they are good at down. A database is an important tool to be used in crisis not to recruit. Help people be there best with the information gathered. How do you gather stories? You do it through small groups. When you hear the stories, put it on a blog. Use systems already in place such as the small group. Glenn added that you do not have to buy an expensive system. Google Desktop will reorganize your hardware to search desktop as fast as the internet. You can search for names or giftings recorded in your system. You can also use Outlook.

Challenges that the conference participants added are that it this is a slower process than recruitment, it requires strategic planning, and you have to know relationally in depth. It takes time and effort.

Glenn brought up the example of Barack Obama's mobilization of a lot of volunteers. Don said he did it by broadening way the information gets to people. You can use blogs, texts, letters. Once you set up the system to contact people, you can keep using it. Glenn continued that Obama was doing it relationally, because people were calling their friends.

Don Simmons on Volunteerism

Don Simmons teaches at Fresno State and was a professor at Golden Gate Theological Seminary. He was instrumental in the One by One Leadership program. He is head of Creative Potential, Consulting and Training.

The whole focus of the training today is why do people serve and why do people volunteer. There is a lot of focus internally when there is so much work to do outward. If you are not making disciples in volunteering you are not getting the most out of the service. We have a mountain of things to do, but doing them is our responsibility. Discipleship is the leadership responsibility. It is experiential discipleship - "follow me and I will teach you to become." In the process things happen. It isn't about how many but how to invest in those that say "yes."

Language matters. If you want to change the culture, change the language. Start calling things what they are. When the Chinese took over Mongolia, they outlawed the local language and said they had to speak Mandarin. One way we measure other Christians is in what they say. We have problematic words. The root of volunteer is "I choose." It's my choice. We want peole who are gifted, called, commissioned. Do you know the difference between a volunteer and one who is called? The volunteer looks at the difficulties and the called looks at the service. Don helped to write a book called Some Do Care in which they did 1000 interviews of people who were doing amazing service tutoring the blind. When asked why they did it, they responded that they had to, it was their life and who they were. Most volunteer models guilt, beg, plead and pressure into service. We say it is okay if we spiritualize. Rather than volunteers we should call them servants.

Another word that doesnt' belong in the church is "recruit." Jesus never recruited. He knew who they were and knew when he was speaking to them that he was interupting their life. He invited them personally by name - not by mass blitz or plea. He asked and invited. If he sensed they were not ready, he had another conversation with them. We think we need to move with speed and volume, but the church was not built for efficiency. We have a problem called sin.

A statistic done in 2008 said that 93% of all people do not have the personality to be self-initiators. The other 7% have a very high flake or freak factor. Of those 2% are likely to decide they don't like it. They sign up for everything and then quit. One participant of the conference asked Don what happens we they have a need but they don't want to guilt. Don said they need to back up and look at whole structure and be willing to change it. Also, what can they do to maximize and supplement with partnerships? What can they pay? You may not be able to do for free. We get people for all the wrong reasons. Don prays the LORD will protect the church when they say they need everybody. There should be some spectators that grow to it.

What are we doing to help the 93%? The pool of invitors is too small, and they are not the right people. If you are paid to do the ministry, you are not the right person to ask for volunteers who are not paid. A better is approach is to ask volunteers to ask other volunteers to serve with them.

Don was recently part of Extreme Makeover in Fresno, CA. The only benefit the volunteers received was that a family got to have a new house. They needed 1000 people, and the way they got the volunteers was for people to invite friends. 4000 people showed up at each shift. We need to teach people how to invite. Pulpit pleas and ministry expositions don't work.

There are three steps to engaging people. First, you Identify the right people. Pay attention to people. Ask people if they know people who can...

People appreciate organization. The more clearly you can describe the task, the more likely they will be to come back. They will be thinking more about what difference does this make rather than what am I doing. Give them a clear description of what they are to do and not do.

The next step is to Inform them of the opportunities.

Third, you are to Invite. Learn how to invite people. Invite them specifically with a sketched out ministry description. Ask them if they can commit to a set amount of time. Invite them peer to peer. Invite them to the team. Sign-ups don't work.

If you don't recruit there are two ways to gain servants. First you identify the need and pray. Make an honest commitment to not say you need anything, but give the church stories of those who are serving and how it is impacting their life and the lives of others. People respond to the stories. There was a church that for sixteen weeks wove stories of service in the youth program by the parents and children into every sermon. The people overwhelmingly responded to the stories. People come to church to see life changed when people tell stories of such. The second way to gain servants is to ask people you currently know in service who they know who can serve.

It is about servanthood rather than giftedness and a responsibility to the body even when you are not crazy about doing the work. It is not volunteering but rather servanthood, family, ministry, and church. It is not just social work with Bible verses.

Good Cities Learning Communities Beginnings in Central Arkansas

Five years ago Fellowship Bible Church was a participant in a leadership community in Dallas with churches from all over the country. At the time, they were reluctant to think it would be very useful. They went down there on faith. It actually gave te team time to focus on where they were and where they wanted to go. They made a commitment that they would continue this process with those churches for the next two years every six months. It was a discipline but it was encouraging to hear from like-minded churches from all over the country. Then, Fellowship thought that it would be good to do it with the churches local to Central Arkansas, to build relationships and to collaborate. Later they had the opportunity to partner with Glenn Barth of Good Cities, and this is the third meeting, started two years ago.

Glenn Barth spoke about the Biblical implications of this work. The Bible begins with a garden and ends with a city. Jesus was born in a village and died in a city. There are several passages that speak about the importance of the city. In Acts 18:9, 10 it says "Do not be afraid...for I have many people in this city." We get overwhelmed by what we need to do, but the reality is that God already has the people there to do it. Acts started in a city and went to the world. It speaks powerfully of unity when people can look at the church as see how we love one another. Jeremiah 29:7 says to "seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive." Glenn continued to say that we are in the world but not of the world, and we are citizens of a different city. Instead of thinking of it as a ministry, we need to see it as having the same calling as Jesus. Jesus could lay down his life knowing he was changing not only Jerusalem but the whole world. We too need to go to the tough places to make the sacrifice today to see change tomorrow.

Good Cities Leadership Community is about connecting and resourcing people who want to transform their city. Their mission is the help city leaders combine the good deeds and good news of the gospel ito the life of the city to bring about kingdom transformation, and their vision is to change the world by engaging the church worldwide in the needs and dreams of their communities so as to bring about spiritual and societal transformation. The dreams and needs are already in the community. They come alongside to see how they can help. Good Cities likes to work with smaller groups who want to see how they can become more externally focused and mobilize volunteers. They also do ministry coaching, provide resources like Don Simmons today, offer city consultations, and do publishing.

Learning Principles from Other People's Ideas

The participants were divided into three groups and asked to read and draw principles from three different articles.

The first group a chapter from the book Making Room for Life by Randy Frazee about how to deal with the fragmentation of doing so much in the church. In this article, the pastor recruited what he thought was the ideal small group, but it turned out to be the worst experience, because they were so fragmented. Then the pastor told about something that had happened to him that had changed his idea. One day, a neighbor borrowed a ladder from him. The next day, the pastor noticed that the neighbor already had a ladder. Borrowing the ladder had made the pastor feel needed and a relationship developed. The pastor then thought that the church needed to focus on how to serve the neighbor rather than focusing on programs. Principles learned from the article include place, proximity, and natural relationship for ministering to the local community. Instead of focusing on programs, come alongside people in community group to reach people in his circle of influence.


The next group read the article Good to Great and the Social Sectors by Jim Collins. Mr. Collins was in a meeting of successful CEOs when he challenged them with a proposition that probably offended them, "When you compare great companies with good ones, many widely practiced business norms turn out to correlate with mediocricity, not greatness. So then, why would we want to import the practices of mediocricity into the social sectors?" He said that they do not need more business concepts. They need to correctly define success, having a consistent method of assessing output results. The group used Fellowships after-school program as an example. They were worried about how many students and volunteers were involved when the big idea was supposed to be how involved the parents were.


The third group read an article by David Dorsey that was about positive deviants. Mr. Dorsey wrote about an organization called Feed the Children. They were finding in impoverished areas that there not all the children were malnourished. Some were doing quite well. Those children were postive deviants. They learned that in homes where there were healthy children, the mothers were feeding foods that were unacceptable to the culture. The organization began reproducing what was working with those children. The group reading the article found four principles to mobilizing volunteers: use people from different disciplines and backgrounds to work together, if something is working feed the existing rather than starting something new, learn from what is happening in the organization, make teachers of those working in the areas that are working. It is experience-based mobilization.Where are people making break-throughs? Use this as a teaching experience.

Status of the Churches in the Last Six Months

Glenn asked the churchs to take some time to layout what their successes have been, what has been working, where they are stuck, and what have been the surprises in the last six months.

Geyers Springs First Baptist Church started by saying that their greatest success has been in their relationship with Otter Creek Elementary School. They have been working with them in literacy, mentoring, Sharefest, prayer with families, back to school program, and Upward sports with great success. What has been working is that they have a great open line of communication with the school so that the school feels open to calling upon them to express needs. They are stuck in that they feel they have not done enough to communicate the success in telling stories and they still need a greater presence at the school. The surprise has been that the principal of the school retired, and there was concern that there would be a breakdown in communication, but actually, because of the great investment with the existing staff, the relationship has continued to prosper with the new principal. Ray Williams of Fellowship reported that the assistant principal of Otter Creek moved to a school in which Fellowship is involved came into the Fellowship school with a positive attitude about the church's involvement.

Fellowship Bible Church reported success in launching the after school mentoring program at Franklin Elementary. It is called the Passport to Success. One aspect of this program is connecting families from Franklin with mentoring families from Fellowship. This connecting with the families is something with which Fellowship had struggled. A girl from one family of Fellowship even thought that the getting together of the families was cool. What is working at Fellowship is the revitalization of small groups to engage in various outreaches. There has been a philosophical shift of the community outreach being placed on small groups rather than just a couple of staff people. The surprise is that the body has taken the ministry to heart. Fellowship is stuck in the area of communication. It is difficult to get the word out about ministry needs in a timely manner because there are so many gatekeepers to the information.














Summit Church's success has been to do a good job of sending out missionaries and there is a good core of lay leaders serving. An example of a successful ministry is the use of the "Farley" grill that is a large grill on a trailer. They were able to feed 600-700 people. They have also been able to grow their ministry to the community in having block parties using the grill. This is opening the door to communication with the community. What is working is the partnerships being created through Good Cities Learning Communities. There have been big strides in the last year. Second Baptist has partnered with them in the homeless project. They are working on celebrating more what God is doing in the outreaches during the worship services. What they need is volunteers. People are not participating. A lot of lay people are involved, but they are by themselves. Having to break through the paradigm that it is not just about being fed, but also in mobilization. The surprise has been the increase in participation in Sharefest. Whereas only 60-70 people signed up, they had 150 people serving on two campuses. God provided the people to get the work done. Also, this fall, small groups started in engaging in ministry together.

Hoover United Methodist Church has a new pastoral and lay leadership. It has been surprising how well the new leadership has integrated with the existing leadership. The new leadership has been an enhancement. There has also been increased participation of the community with existing members. They will have to wait and see if there will be any problems arising from having the new leadership. Their outreach ministry is working. The existng ministries are moving to new facilities. The surprise has been the lack of internal knowledge of what is going on in ministry. The members have not seen the community as a mission field.

Second Baptist Church's succes has been the involvement of people in Sharefest. The growth in outreach is working. The homeless ministry is one example. Six months ago they were concerned about partnership and resources. Summit Church partnered with them to make it possible for them to expand the services they are able to provide. Also, Second Baptist has been able to get the youth involved in the prison ministry. They are stuck on how to reach out to the homeless to show them where they can obtain services Second Baptist isn't able to provide. The surprise has been the partnerships being generated.

Introduction to Good Cities January 09 Conference

Ray Williams opened the meeting with prayer and by thanking Geyer Springs First Baptist Church for the use of the facilities and for their preparation for this conference. Glenn Barth, the Good Cities Learning Communities facilitator started the conference by saying that the whole purpose of the conference is to advance the engagement of people in Little Rock outside the walls of the church. Growing disciples is part of the mission of the church, but it is also to mobilize people outside the church to be change agents. Today we will be discussing volunteerism - how to motivate people to be laborers in the harvest. As Jesus said, "The fields are white for harvest."

As a facilitator, it is Glenn's purpose to expose the participants to new knowledge such as through readings and scenarios; promote understanding, to take the knowledge and begin to think about what it means to the participant and how to communicate it to others; and decision-action that will mean taking new plans back to the churches. The participants are asked to be fully present in the discovery process which will entail five stages - what is, what might be, what could be, what should be, and what will be.