Community Ministry: New Challenges, Proven Steps to Faith-based Initiatives

Community Ministry: New Challenges, Proven Steps to Faith-based Initiatives

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Summary:

Do you feel overwhelmed by the needs in your community that are crying out for attention? Do you desire to see your congregation effectively meet these needs but don’t know where to begin? In this comprehensive and practical book, Carl Dudley provides you with a step-by-step plan to help you develop a mercy ministry that brings hope, healing, and love to the lonely and hurting.

Dudley lays out a game plan that involves the following steps:

• Define your community by a.) Charting the physical boundaries, b.) Identifying the anchor institutions and c.) Looking for gathering places.
• Identify the people by a.) Observing populations and lifestyles, b.) Noting historical changes and current trends, and c.) reviewing statistical summaries
• Identify the people in the community who are “ignored, marginalized or out of sight”; the “invisible” people.
• Analyze the intangible forces of the community: the social, economic, political, and religious forces that operate in the community.
• Listen to your community by beginning conversations with wide variety of people from different areas of the community.
• Choose your focus ministry.

The book offers suggestions on what might be done each step of the process while at the same time giving concrete examples of what specific churches and agencies have done. Dudley offers suggestions for further reading throughout the book and includes useful appendices containing web links for community ministries, gleanings from his years with community ministry, and a list of congregations and faith-based organizations involved in community ministry.

Why does FASTEN recommend this resource?

As director of a study that helped eighty congregations begin social ministries and as someone with over twenty-five years of experience working with social service organizations, Dudley knows as much about starting social ministries as anyone. The book is a strong “how-to” guide for creating a mercy ministry to your community that is built on a thorough analysis of the needs and character of the community.