What could be a catalyst for entire communities being served by local churches? What could stimulate a church to intentionally see and meet needs?
The Intentional Community Evangelism (ICE) strategy originally developed by the North American Mission Board combines prayer, evangelism, discipleship, coaching and neighborhood events to engage entire communities.
Each ICE initiative is a 12-month process in which a church or group of churches are guided to develop unique and personal strategies for serving the surrounding community.
“The main goal in the ICE evangelism training is to discover a training method that works for the church and the cultural context of the people the church is trying to reach. A strategy that the church will not use is no strategy at all, so the church must be comfortable and confident with the particular evangelistic approach it chooses,” said Jack Partridge, South Carolina Baptist Convention personal evangelism director.
Mountain Creek Baptist Church in Greenville made a commitment last fall to be a part of ICE. The area around the church has exploded in growth recently, with approximately 67,000 people living within 10 minutes of the church.
“Our challenge – is that of reaching a community filled with thousands of people, mostly white-collar executive-types, many of which are unconcerned about church. To reach those folks, we’re going to have to use some non-traditional tactics. The challenge is tremendous,” said David Shirley, pastor.
Through ICE, Shirley, church staff and lay leaders have met with SCBC staff members to develop strategies to actively engage the community, starting with intentional prayer.
“Prayer is really the bedrock of the ICE strategy. It prepares the hearts of the community and the church for a movement of God,” said Partridge.
Partridge says each church member participating in ICE is trained in prayerwalking and is asked to organize prayerwalks of designated areas. Mountain Creek had more than 100 people participate in prayerwalk training and has hosted two community prayerwalks, with another scheduled in March.
As a part of ICE, Mountain Creek has contracted with an amusement park company to host a block party with rides and free food, and will be hosting a women’s dinner and a men’s golf tournament. Mountain Creek has also given church members cards with contact information of the church and has encouraged them to order meals in drive-through lines, pay for the order of the next car and ask the cashier to hand the card to the driver with their meal. Church members are also leaving packages of light bulbs on porches in the community with lists of upcoming church events such as Vacation Bible School.
“Participants will be trained and equipped to follow up quickly with those who have made professions of faith in Jesus Christ, and to disciple them through a small group Bible study,” said Partridge.
The ICE strategy culminates with three days of intentional community evangelistic events; however, the process does not end there.
“The Intentional Community Evangelism strategy process will just begin for the local church as it will be encouraged to continue in the practices that it learned over the year,” said Partridge.
For Mountain Creek, it means continuing to follow where the Holy Spirit is leading.
“Our heartfelt desire is to reach our community for the Lord Jesus Christ. We have a burden to reach those who live all around us. To be totally honest, Mountain Creek is a church that has been here a long time and probably hasn’t impacted this community like it should have. We hope to change that through ICE and with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit,” said Shirley.
For more information on ICE, contact the SCBC lifestyle evangelism group at (800) 723-7242, ext. 5321.