Between February 9-12, at Ilieni, Harghita county, BIG had three consecutive work, evaluation and celebration meetings, detailed below.
A. GLS team
After several delayed meetings due to the harsh winter conditions and overcrowding of the calendars of all the people involved, the coordinators of the Romanian sites of the Summit met at Ilieni on February 9-10, for a time of evaluation, planning and discussions linked to budgets, dates, locations and speakers.
The year 2009 meant for the Romanian Summit an enormous leap of faith, going from one site – Sovata 2008, to 5 locations: Cluj Napoca, Bucuresti, Galati, Hunedoara and Timisoara. Although this move meant significant challenges regarding local volunteer teams, local infrastructure, equipment, production, resources, etc all the difficulties raised by organizing such an event, to such a level of quality were successfully overcome by the extraordinary commitment of all those involved.
With more than 1000 participants in each location, each of the sites went over the proposed target number in terms of attendance.
The evaluation done with the national team, and the one received from the participants have shown an impressive impact of the Summit in the lives of those who attended the Summit. We are extremely excited to see God powerfully using this tool for reaching the new generation of leaders in Romania.
The big request for this event led to the adding of two more sites for 2010, in Satu Mare and Iasi, discussions being held right now for organizing a site for the Romanians abroad, especially in Germany.
The big challenges for 2010 – 7 sites plus one abroad, involve a significant level of decentralization, to be able to maintain the quality standards that make this event a memorable one. Please pray for this effort, as 7 local Romanian teams are getting ready for this years’ summit, and as the national team is involved in the process of selecting the speakers, translating the messages and preparing the DVD’s and the overall production.
B. Curriculum Development Team
The national curriculum development team met in Ilieni, between February 10-11, for an evaluation and celebration of the BIG5.2 course, which started last year and continues in the BIG regional centers across the country. We rejoiced together, evaluating the quality of the conference in Sovata in terms of messages, interaction, and seminaries. We studied the evaluations completed by the participants and we were, once more, overwhelmed by what God can do. A big part of the feedback shows a significant progress in terms of quality and content, in the BIG5 series. After 3 years of working with the local teams from various churches, we could see that all the “mechanism” is making sense for the participants, who are actively involving in the regional centers in implementing the course in the local church.
Because of the various degrees of progress at the level of the regional centers, 2010 will be focused on bringing all the centers up to date, finalizing all three courses that we already went through. In 2011 we will continue with the fourth part of the series.
C. BIG Impact Board
The executive board of the BIG-Impact Foundation met for evaluating and planning the activities of the Ministry in Ilieni, on February 11-12. This part of the year is usually reserved for adjusting the job descriptions, the BIG bylaws manual, evaluation of the employees and the writing of the personal development plans. Although the potential that the BIG platform has is significant at a national level (observed during the two meetings before the board meeting, with the GLS team and the curriculum development team), a big part of the discussions was focused on the financial crisis that has to be resolved with priority, so that BIG could continue functioning.
We invite you to join us in prayers, as God puts this unto your hearts, and, even help us financially, so that you could be part, together with God and us, in this extraordinary adventure, to see a global impact churches movement developing all across Romania and beyond.