Saying Good Bye to the Buro
When we coined the phrase “Building Up—Reaching Out” for our building program several years ago, I really liked the idea. Not the acronym (BURO), though it has grown on me over the years, but the words that are reflected in the acronym. Building Up, not just our building (adding a second floor), but also building up our people. And Reaching Out—to one another an
d to our community.
Well, we’ve nearly reached the end of BURO and its time to say good bye. After all, it was meant to be a five-year commitment and we began in June of 2003. The chicken salad suppers ran through the summer months and helped us to introduce BURO to our congregation.
In that program we included the following:
1. Beginning a Young Adults Worship Service
2. The Church Plant
3. Building Expansion
Of those three initiatives, only the building expansion remains to be completed. Our One Life campaign captures that unfinished business and adds to it several of the initiatives from our “2006-2011 5 Year Strategic Plan”.
From our Strategic Plan, Initiative 1, Community and Group Development, speaks directly to our need to be in the community to achieve a greater impact in our communities. In our One Life Campaign, this comes under Community Life.
Initiative 2, Leadership Training, is addressed through our Global Leadership Endowment.
Under Initiative 4, Church Planting, the Strategic Plan highlights 3 bullet points: research, recommend, and implement a satellite church; establish one or more new church plants or struggling church restarts; implement the process for one or more church plant/restarts. One Life develops this through our “One Church-Many Locations” initiative. The details of what “Immanuel in many locations” might look like are being researched and recommendations will be made to the elders.
While it looks like we are ready to say “Good Bye” to BURO, I look forward to where One Life, NO LIMITs will be able to take us.
Ron Hilbig
Director of Communications,
Immanuel Bible Church
Not sure if Ron is speaking for himself only, or expressing the intent of the elders – - to finally be done with the “BURO” effort. I wholeheartedly agree that it’s time to put BURO behind us.