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20/20 Vision for Schools (Part 3 of 4)
By Jeremy | January 6, 2008
Visionary Leadership
Coalition strategist Nicole Baker cautions that youth pastors alone cannot implement 20/20 Vision. Congregational support requires the commitment of senior pastors and church elders as well. Rev. Gary Frost, director of leadership collaboration for the NYC Leadership Center and senior pastor of Evergreen Baptist Church in Brooklyn, is even more bold: “Adopting schools is an idea whose time has come. 20/20 Vision is a workable strategy for scalable impact that moves congregations beyond ‘evangelical’ to evangelistic.â€Â
Rev. Frost should know. In his previous role as executive director of the Metropolitan New York Baptist Association, he was the first denominational leader to invest monetary resources to help churches adopt schools this summer.
For three years, MNYBA had sponsored a short-term missions experience for the Southern Baptist Convention called Paint the Town, which mobilized over 3,000 volunteers from around the country to beautify New York City schools. In 2007, after hearing the 20/20 Vision concept, Rev. Frost recognized PTT as a unique opportunity to empower local congregations to establish or enhance existing relationships with local schools.
Rather than rely on centralized PTT staff to identify and manage the projects as MNYBA had done in prior years, Rev. Frost offered grants totaling $100,000 to congregations to work directly with neighborhood schools.
Rev. Frost aligned PTT with 20/20 and invited the Coalition to help identify local ministries for grants. His theory: “If a church was already praying for a school, then PTT would represent an answer to those prayers. What better way to engage schools generally than to become a resource for congregations that had already embraced specific schools?â€Â
Perhaps most radical of all, Rev. Frost designated up to 30% of the grants for non-Baptist ministries in order to invest in the Coalition’s recommendations without regard to denominational affiliation.
The result was eleven PTT projects in all five boroughs and New Jersey. Some strengthened ongoing relationships between established churches and community schools. Others forged new relationships for church plants. Still others provided opportunities for congregations to rediscover God’s passion for their neighborhoods.
All, however, reported opened hearts and minds that produced what Walter Sotelo of CitiVision called “crazy glue†connections between schools and their sponsoring churches. Jannie Wolff of Abounding Grace described how the influx of volunteers prompted onlookers to ask who they were and why they kept coming. As word spread, individuals approached them looking for prayer. Pastor Ed Perry of Bethsalem Church described how PTT helped restore confidence in the faith community. For the principal he described a conversion of sorts, moving from cynic to a believer in the church’s ability to deliver on its promises.
Milestones
While the Coalition rhetorically challenges all 7,100 NYC churches to adopt a school, its short-term objectives are much more manageable. Baker, director of the Queens Boro Pregnancy Counseling Center, notes that, “If just 10% of the 7,100 churches (710) made commitments to pray for one school each – a tithe of all the churches in the city – then half the schools (700) would be covered.†With 10% as its three-year goal, the Coalition hopes to recruit 71 churches, or 1%, to officially launch 20/20 Vision in September.
To that end, the Coalition is planning informational workshops throughout the spring, and exploring funding possibilities for service projects this summer. Also in the works: a forum with school officials, teachers, and clergy; and a Back-to-School Commissioning Sunday in September with all 20/20 churches. Visit www.CoalitionNYC.com/adopt-a-school for prayer guides, sermon notes, and to register your church’s involvement.
Topics: 2020 vision, adopt-a-school, coalition, youth ministry | No Comments »
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