As you consider the costs of a Prayer Summit, here are important points to consider.
- Pre-summit meetings for vision casting and consulting: These meetings form the foundation for the entire summit experience and beyond. They also are valuable for keeping the vision fresh between summits. Though part of your overall summit cost, these meetings may be paid for from some other source besides your summit registrations.
- Prayer Summit location
- The number of summit participants: Our experience shows it is wise to make a low estimate and let any ‘surprise’ be a good one.
- Facilitator costs: In addition to the suggested honorarium, consider costs of transportation, room and board, and any other possible extra lodging.
- Participant transportation: Make transportation to and from the summit part of the summit experience and add wonderful value to what otherwise could be wasted time. Consider chartering a bus, using a church bus, or organizing a car pool. Planning transportation not only will increase the fellowship, but also can reduce late arrivals and early departures.
- Inviting people to the Prayer Summit: The costs of a summit are not only those incurred during the summit. Please consider the costs of publications and other means of encouraging people to be at the summit.
- Scholarships: You may want to grant some scholarships. Establishing a scholarship fund helps to eliminate financial hindrances to attending a Prayer Summit, especially for bivocational and inner-city pastors. We do not recommend full scholarships because a relationship often exists between financial investment and perceived value.
- The possibility of non-registration income
- Seed money for another community: Some summit communities have been a tremendous blessing to another community (a small, nearby community or a community in a different nation) by intentionally ‘adopting’ them and supplying some money for their first summit or two.