City Strategy Congress

Once a suitable basis of understanding has been built up amongst the "agents of change" then a broader based gathering of leaders can be initiated.

The City Strategy Congress brings together, by personal invitation, the whole of the recognized leaders in the city who are  strategically-oriented evangelicals.  It is a time when a vision for the city is discerned and developed as a prophetic message to the whole church, from a unified Leadership.  The purpose is the involvement of the wider church in the process of planning and envisaging, and ownership by all  aspects of the whole process. 

It should include Leadership from five main groupings; the pastoral networks, the business Leadership of the city, the women's networks, the youth networks and the social service networks of the churches.

Unlike a consultation, a Congress is a large, celebrative, declarative event, based on the shared vision and goals of the participating networks.  It is a place to call the church, and generate new infrastructure or expand existing infrastructure.   It provides a context for publication of key ideas in usable and marketable formats. 

Early in the process of initiating it, invitation to the denominational heads (the official leaders) to be involved in some form of an advisory committee, board of reference, or in some other way to give their blessing is an important step.   Such leaders generally cannot initiate new directions, particularly between denominations, but they can bless or block grass roots movements.   They are gate-keepers, protectors of the larger flocks.  They also are often more strongly gifted as administrators and politicians than visionaries.  The negative tendency, the opposite side of the administrative gift is to see reasons why new initiatives will create work, rather then to see the power of a new release of life. 

 From Vision Statement to Prophetic Message

During the City Strategy Congress there should not only be a Vision Statement for use as a planning mechanism, but also the meshing of the many visions into a Prophetic Call to take the city into the next phase of the battle. Such a prophetic message and its component parts should be written down into a format  accessible to the whole Christian Leadership of the city.

Over the months between the pre-consultations and the City Strategy Consultation, as you refine this and discuss it with various leaders in your city, patterns will emerge of what the needs are, of what God has been doing, of what he has been speaking.  Out of the research, and the listening to God this can be honed to a clarion call to your people to move on into what he desires.

 From Prophetic Message to Simple Slogans

Visions and messages don't mobilize unless they are converted into simply usable formats.  The Jesus March without a manual, would not have multiplied into thousands of Marches in a few years.  The AD2000 Movement, Concerts of Prayer, all multiplied rapidly because of simple manuals.

Can these visions be integrated into a strategy, motto, vision?  Slogan's are useful such as Christchurch's "Friends in Ministry"  with their "Seeking the Welfare of the City" or L.A.'s "Celebrating Christ in the City of Angels".   Someone needs to journalese these materials and simplify them down into formats that can be used readily by all.  A grouping of media or publishing people need to be involved in the framing of simple communications tools.

 Then effective distribution networks need to be developed for their dissemination.  If these are built into the ongoing strategic mobilization, the consultations and development of networks, they become relatively self-funding.

In the Australian Awakening, 30 different manuals were developed by groups that had over the years found effective ways of breaking through the cultural barriers to evangelizing Aussies.  one of them for example, is a manual on how to start an associate work connected to the awakening.  These are simple, affordable, practical. 

 Unusual Catalytic Events

A major event can sometimes catapult the churches of the city through to effective unified strategy very swiftly. Sometimes the leaders are jolted into working together and the people of the various congregations are shocked into action. 

The riots of Los Angeles catalyzed such brokenness between the spiritual Leadership of Afro-American, Korean and Hispanic church leaders. Within days of the riots, hundreds of Korean Christians marched on the streets, kneeling and asking God for forgiveness; the leaders of the ethnic groups met together and publicly asked each other for forgiveness.

 The leader of the predominantly Anglo prayer movement publicly acknowledged his lack of background and theology to deal with oppression in the city and went down to sit with his black brothers in the inner city to learn.  Out of this new coalitions were birthed, new theologies formed, new directions discerned.

The fires and riots in Bombay of 1993 and 1994 propelled  Christian leaders into becoming mediators between Muslim and Hindu neighbors.  From this 8 churches linked to initiate works in the slum areas of the city. 

But such events may also be a carefully planned major event that instills into the churches of the city a desire to see the whole city won. 

I was in England at a Concert of Prayer in  St. Helens, England,  when a little old lady got up and told of how she had for years had cups of tea with her neighbors but never been able to tell them of Jesus, until the Jesus March came.  It provided her an opportunity to speak of a dramatic event and of the Jesus behind it.

 A revival meeting in Auckland, New Zealand that drew almost all of the pastors and involved some dramatic activity by the Holy Spirit, sparked a new wave of unity preparing the way forward for a new thrust. 

A gathering at Parliament in Canberra, Australia, of 50,000 people to pray for government initiated the Australian Re-awakening.   News had leaked out, that the parliament were going to stop the traditional prayers that opened parliament.  (Nothing unites Aussies more than to say they cannot do something).