Would Your Church Like to Host a Prayer Conference?
One of the best ways to jump start people into a deeper level of prayer is to encourage them through a conference. Many have attended our regional or national conferences, some churches spending thousands of dollars to do so. While we want to continue challenging you to come to our events, have you ever thought of bringing an event to your area? Most of our regional conferences are planned due to an invitation from the hosting church, not us seeking a location.
What Does It Take?
There are two possible conferences you can host.
1. An individual speaker conference.
The CPLN recommends Jonathan Graf, but there are available speakers in your region as well who you could bring in. These conferences are put on and expenses covered by your church. In a sense you are paying to bring in a speaker for a prayer weekend. Expenses may vary, based on travel and housing expenses and agreed upon honorarium. Each speaker has slightly different requirements. You can pick a speaker either by topic or closeness to you. The speakers are listed below, with their location and whether or not they travel nationally or regionally. There certainly are lots of other speakers available who can teach on prayer, so you may want to research who is in your area who can facilitate a prayer weekend.
2. A Church Prayer Leaders Network Regional Conference
A church asks to host a regional event that will be advertised by the CPLN nationally. We bring in at least two speakers to provide keynotes and workshops. The church provides a worship team, a local logistics planning committee, volunteers, and its facilities free of charge (no room rental, hourly pay for technicians, etc.). The church also focuses on inviting other local churches and does promotion in its city.
There are three possible funding plans for this kind of conference:
Plan A. (The most popular) Much like having a speaker come in, the host church pays CPLN $2,500. This is due several months ahead of the conference. The CPLN pays its own travel and hotel expenses, and covers speaker honorariums. The CPLN makes the rest of what it needs to put on the conference through registration fees. Here’s the great benefit for the host church: because it paid $2,500, the host church’s members can come to the conference just for the cost of lunch on Saturday (the church either picks up that cost for them or charges its people). The $2,500 is in essence scholarshipping its people. (Note: The church does also pay for the lunches of its people who attend, so it is wise to charge something for their people who attend.)
Plan B. The host church provides its facilities free, pays CPLN $1,500, but its people pay a significantly reduced registration fee (Usually 35-40% off or $20-$25). We will only agree to this plan if there is a strong CPLN membership base in a church’s area and the church guarantees that at least 50 of its own people will come. (The church makes up the amount of the additional registrations if less than 50 attend.)
Plan C. The host church provides it facilities free, but it finds three to six other churches to co-sponsor the event. Each co-sponsoring church puts up $500 (if the host church finds at least four churches to co-sponsor, it does not need to pay the $500). People from each of the sponsoring churches–including the host church–then come at a reduced rate (usually 35-40% off or $20-$25).
With CPLN Regionals, we need a church that can handle at least 300 people in its sanctuary, and has enough rooms to have 4-6 workshops.
Contact Jonathan Graf to discuss your interest further.
