A revival history people trust
Wilmore is a name that already carries weight in this world. An Asbury partnership signals seriousness in a way no sponsorship line item can.
Rise Cayman
01A partnership invitation to Asbury University
“Around the world”
needs a place on the map.
Asbury has been sending people into the culture since 1890. Rise Cayman is building the place that work can land, a long weekend on an island whose national motto is a line of scripture. And we would like Asbury’s donors in the room when it happens.
- Cayman Islands
- Festival April 30 – May 2, 2027
- Anchored on Emancipation Day, May 3
- A donor activation weekend
02Shared language
Your mission statement already reads like our brief.
Asbury’s published mission talks about equipping students to engage their cultures and advance the cause of Christ around the world. That is a sending sentence, and sending needs a destination.
We did not write our language to match yours. It just kept landing in the same place.
AsburyRise Cayman
- Academic excellenceCraft that competes
- Spiritual vitalityWorship at the center
- Leadership and serviceArtists, families, island
- Engage their culturesMusic, film, broadcast
- Advance the cause of ChristRedemptive media
- Around the worldCayman as the harbor
Left column paraphrases Asbury University’s published mission statement at asbury.edu. Right column is Rise Cayman’s own framing. The pairing is our reading, not the University’s.
03What we mean by redemptive media
Not clean content.
Honest stories that refuse to leave you in the dark.
Stories that tell the truth, dignify people, and restore hope. Stories that do not look away from darkness and refuse to leave the audience there.
Rise Cayman’s working definitionMusic normally moves in one direction. Even at a live festival the person in the crowd is still consuming something that was made somewhere else, by someone they will never meet.
Rise Cayman is built to move people along a different line, from consumer to participant, from participant to industry supporter, from supporter to community builder. That last step is where donors already live.
04Why Cayman
A nation whose motto is a verse.
Psalm 24:2The national motto · “He hath founded it upon the seas”
~90 minFlight time from Miami
May 3Emancipation Day, 2027
Cayman is a pro-gospel, pro-family country with genuine hospitality infrastructure, English common law and a short flight from most of the American South. So the question we keep putting to partners is a plain one. Why wouldn’t this industry want to build here.
Rise Cayman is being positioned inside the Cayman Government’s Heritage Month calendar for May 2027, on a weekend the country already gathers to celebrate Emancipation. Those conversations are live. Nothing is contracted.
Flight time is approximate. No government commitment, funding, permit or calendar placement is confirmed or implied by this document.
05Rise Cayman · the gathering
The weekend your donors would be flying into.
10,000+Expected attendance
3+Curated stages
Apr 30 – May 22027 · Anchored on Emancipation Day, May 3
Thu to MonGuest travel window · April 29 to May 3
Multi-venueAcross the Cayman Islands
Worship, gospel
country, CaribbeanThe intended roster
Three days of music, story, faith and community, staged across the islands rather than penned into a single field, on a weekend the whole country is already off work. The roster is still being assembled, and we would rather shape the rest of it alongside partners who care about the same things than hand over a finished plan and ask for a signature.
Attendance and stage counts are Rise Cayman’s own planning projections for April 30 to May 2, 2027, not ticketed or audited figures. No artists, venues, sponsors or production partners are confirmed anywhere in this document.
06Why Asbury
We came to Wilmore first.
Asbury has spent more than a century holding onto spiritual vitality and academic seriousness at the same time, and refusing to trade either one for the other. That combination is rarer than it ought to be, and it is exactly what we hope stands beside this project.
So the invitation came to Wilmore before it went anywhere else. Not for a name on a poster, but because we would like to build this with people who already believe what Asbury has been teaching.
A media program that ships
Asbury media communication students have worked Olympic Games coverage. They are trained for exactly the kind of live, multi-venue production this weekend demands.
Donors who give to formation
Asbury supporters are not buying a table. They fund young people being sent somewhere hard, and that is the story this weekend tells out loud.
Students who need a real assignment
A festival this size runs on crews. Media students could work it as a credit-bearing corps and go home with a reel that gets them hired.
Alumni already in the rooms
Asbury graduates sit in broadcast, worship and production teams across the country. A Cayman platform gives them somewhere to bring their people.
To be plain about it: Asbury University has not agreed to anything, has not been asked to endorse anything, and no relationship exists between the University and Rise Cayman. This is our case, not the University’s commitment.
07The donor activation weekend
Thursday in, Monday out, and the days in between are largely yours.
Proposed outline · built around your guests, not around us
- Thursday, April 29
Arrive
Flights land through the afternoon and the day ends with a welcome dinner on the water. No pitch, no lanyards, just your people meeting the island and each other.
- Friday, April 30
Yours until dark
Reef, boats, town, or a quiet morning with a coffee. The festival opens in the evening, and nobody is counting who came.
- Saturday, May 1
Open day, big night
Another unscheduled day, with an optional Asbury gathering for the alumni, students and families already on island. The stages carry the evening.
- Sunday, May 2
Worship and the closing night
Worship on the island in the morning and the festival’s last night after it. Somewhere in between, a private Asbury table for whoever wants to talk about what they have seen.
- Monday, May 3 · Emancipation Day
With Caymanians, then home
The national celebration alongside the people who live here, unhurried, and evening flights out for anyone heading back.
A proposed shape rather than a schedule. The welcome dinner could sit on Thursday or Friday, the daytimes stay open by design, and travel, lodging and hosting would be built around Asbury’s requirements for April 29 to May 3, 2027.
08What Asbury gets
Four returns, and only one of them is a gift receipt.
-
Stewardship somewhere people say yes
Your best supporters, together, watching the mission happen in front of them instead of reading about it in an appeal letter.
-
A student media corps on the ground
A credit-bearing practicum at an international event, with published broadcast work at the end of it.
-
Your people in one room, far from campus
Trustees, faculty, alumni and donors sharing the same days and the same table, finding out how much of the same heart they have been carrying separately.
-
The Asbury name, internationally placed
A recurring annual presence in the Caribbean, tied to a Cayman institution rather than a one-off imported event.
Described benefits are proposals under discussion. None of them constitutes an offer, a contract or an agreed program with any party.
09What we are asking Asbury to consider
Four pieces. Any one of them is a real beginning.
A named partnership
Asbury as a founding academic partner of Rise Cayman, with the title and the terms written together rather than assumed here.
An invitation to your donors
A curated delegation of Asbury supporters, hosted for the weekend, traveling as a University group rather than as ticket holders.
A student media corps
A working crew from the media communication program, credited on the broadcast and supervised by your faculty.
A private Asbury gathering
A dinner or session held for your people alone, apart from the festival itself. Asbury sets the tone, chooses the voices and decides who is in the room.
No dollar figure appears in this document. The partnership comes first, and the numbers follow the relationship.
10Where this actually stands
The honest status board.
Advancement offices have seen enough decks that promise a finished thing. This one is early, and pretending otherwise would waste your diligence team’s afternoon.
So here is the board as it reads today, and we will keep it current for as long as the conversation runs.
WorkstreamStatus
- Dates and conceptSet
- Cayman Government trackConversations live
- Founding partnersBeing assembled
- Artists and rosterIn discussion
- Venues and permitsUnder review
- Development fundingOpen
Nothing marked live or in discussion should be read as secured. A full sources-and-uses budget, governance structure, reporting process, contingency plan and named legal entity would be provided before any financial discussion.
11The ask
Give us forty-five minutes in Wilmore.
Not a commitment, not a budget line, not an announcement. One meeting with advancement and whoever else should be in the room.
- · What a curated Asbury donor delegation could look like
- · Whether media students could work April 30 to May 2, 2027
- · What a partnership would need to be called
- · What your diligence team would need to see next
- Prepared by
- Kenny Klepacki
- kenny@risecayman.com
- Phone & WhatsApp
- +1 727 688 3588 WhatsApp
- The gathering
- risecayman.com
- The dates
- April 30 – May 2, 2027
Anchored on Emancipation Day, May 3
Guests arrive Thu 29 Apr, depart Mon 3 May
Rise Cayman
12Cayman Islands · April 30 – May 2, 2027
You have been sending them out since 1890.
Come see where they could land.
Bring your donors. Bring your students. Let us show them what advancing the cause of Christ around the world looks like when it has an address.
The Tide Is Rising.
Sources, disclaimers and asset notice
Not confirmed. Asbury University has not partnered with, agreed to, endorsed or affiliated itself with Rise Cayman or any related venture, and no relationship exists between them. This document is an unsolicited partnership invitation prepared for the University’s consideration. It contains no statements attributed to the University or to any of its officers, faculty, students or donors.
Sources. Asbury mission language, founding year and media program references are paraphrased from asbury.edu/about. Rise Cayman details from risecayman.com. Attendance, stage and roster figures are Rise Cayman planning projections rather than audited or ticketed numbers. No artists, venues, partners, sponsors, budgets, government commitments, permits or production arrangements are confirmed or implied anywhere in this deck.
Imagery. Photography here is temporary working imagery and must be replaced with fully licensed campaign assets before any broad public promotion. No AI-generated likeness of any person appears in this document.
Prepared privately for Asbury University by Kenny Klepacki. Not for public distribution.