V. To Do:
- Identify a ministry in your community of interest or involvement that seems to be significantly impacting the quality of your city. Choose a ministry (church, compassionate ministry center, parachurch ministry, or other that represents your interests and passions). Go and study it by reading documents, interviewing participants and leaders, and perhaps those in the neighborhood. Try to answer these following questions:
- What is this ministry’s history?
- What is its mission statement? Vision statement? Range and target group?
- What is the history of its leadership? Frequent changes, or consistency?
- What is the attitude of its current leadership? Optimistic? Courageous? Aggressive? Focused?
- How do they handle their resources?
- What makes this ministry different from the “run-of-the-mill” static ministry?
- To what do they attribute their “success?” How do they measure success?
- Is there a unanimous agreement between documents, advertising, leadership perspectives, and neighborhood opinions?
- Visit the Nazarene Mission Support website, and scan through it, along with links of particular interest to you, for compassionate ministries, urban evangelism, and black ministries. In this website is a wealth of current material you can examine periodically to absorb, learn, participate, and discuss with other like-minded “called-ones.”
VI. To Think:
Is our goal to save souls, build churches, rehabilitate communities, extend the Kingdom of God, fight urban sins, defeat Satan, or promote justice? Rank these in terms of importance and decide why you have done so. How does this order inform the way in which you might do urban ministry? Are your priorities working? If not, why not?
To what degree does a person participate in coalitions and collaborations with people from a variety of perspectives without compromising the nature of the message? For example, would you take funds, resources, or personnel from among those who are less than holy? Is there a Biblical precedent for this?
Continue with Session 4