Once upon a time, in a poor community along Virginia's Eastern Shore, a teenager working on a high school service project gathered five young children from her Spanish-speaking neighborhood for afternoon tutoring sessions at a nearby United Methodist church.
As the students' academic skills improved, word of the program spread among Accomack County's Latino parents, many of them immigrants who had struggled to help their children with English, math and other school assignments. Within a few years, the once-tiny service project had blossomed into a full-blown regional ministry.
The ministry, called Una Familia, offers help to 130 elementary-through-high school-age students at five area churches, a small scholarship program, and advocacy and translation services for families.
Its leadership now wants to help even more people by addressing the need for affordable housing and by expanding into a neighboring county.
With these ambitious goals in mind, several of Una Familia's team members attended a pilot program called Ministry Accelerator in January 2017.
Sponsored by the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church, the Ministry Accelerator is a model, borrowed from the business world, that was designed to introduce ministries to the principles and skills that help spur growth.
Accelerators are similar to incubators, but they focus on growing established organizations rather than launching new ones.
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| IDEAS THAT IMPACT: INNOVATION
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The church needs both those who are loyal to existing religious institutions and those eager to usher in what the church will look like next, writes the managing director of grants at Leadership Education at Duke Divinity.
Read more from Victoria White » |
Although church leaders often worry that switching from full-time to part-time clergy will lead to decline, congregations across the country are finding new vitality by reimagining the roles of clergy and laypeople.
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Congregants gather for a sacred weekly meal where the conversation serves as the sermon and freshly baked bread provides nourishment, communion and income. Other churches are using their template to replicate the experience.
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Leading Congregations and Nonprofits in a Connected World: Platforms, People, and Purpose by Hayim Herring and Terri Martinson Elton
Leading Congregations and Nonprofits in a Connected World shares emerging practices for leading and organizing congregations and nonprofits in our increasingly networked lives. Drawing on studies of congregations across denominations, and nonprofits with historic ties to faith communities, Hayim Herring and Terri Elton share practical, research-based guidance for how these organizations can more deeply engage with their communities and advance their impact in a socially connected world.
Learn more and order the book » |
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