No formulas

Richard Hardy suggests ways of identifying the need and the resources available.

As I have travelled round the country in the past few years, speaking with churches and church leaders, one thing has become clear. Many recognise the need for their church to engage with its community in credible and relevant ways, and some are already doing a great deal but are still wondering how they can do even better.

Often as these conversations develop it becomes clear that what they are looking for is something ‘off-the-peg’. A formula that will make community engagement possible with the least amount added to what are already very busy schedules and church programmes.

Of course there are common elements to community engagement wherever you are based. There will also be common themes that will occur all around the country – debt, relationships, parenting, and so on. But the way these issues are expressed and responded to will be unique in every locality.

This is why it’s important that we take a close look at our context.

We need to ask ourselves, what are the issues (and, as a consequence, opportunities) facing the people who live in our neighbourhood? We need to be sure that we have a clear understanding of them.

We also need to recognise that the people in our churches will be different. Those who gather in a village church will be very different to those in a suburb or inner city situation. They may be different in number, but they may also be different in outlook, passion, calling, experience and talent.

Part of the church leader’s role is to identify the needs out there in the community and also identify the resources that are available inside the church to meet those needs.

Here are four tips to do so:

1. Help your people discover how God would have them engage.

This can be done quite simply by asking them about their past experiences, their talents and interests. Let them tell you their story. There are often things in their past or in their present that they would love to be able to use to help others.

Three questions can help in this:

• Are there things that you’ve experienced, that you wish hadn’t, but you hoped could be used to help others?
• If you could do anything and you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you do to serve God and engage with people?
• What do you like doing and how could you involve others in doing them?

2. Create a permission-giving climate.

Make the church a place where people can share their hopes and dreams, their failures and mistakes, and where they know they will be heard and accepted.

This is hugely important where engagement is concerned.

People sometimes perceive church leaders as wanting to control everything. Church leaders can fear that if they are not in control then things will be out of control. This is not necessarily the case.

Allow people to come with their ideas as to how they might engage the community, and to know they are likely to be met with a positive response.

One church in Portsmouth decided to build this policy into its life. As a consequence a club for the elderly was begun, and a lunch club; a work among the Kurds in the city; a schools’ team; a prison-visiting team, and so on.

All of these were the ideas of church members, which proved hugely successful. The fascinating thing was that what people started, they financed.

(You might want to look at a book that works through this idea. It has a great title – Sacred Cows Make Great Gourmet Burgers. It’s by William Easum.)

Begin this plan easily - start talking on a Sunday about the needs in the community, and simply throw out the comment “Is there anything here that prompts you or inspires you to want to respond?”

• One church did this where divorce recovery was concerned, and three divorcees responded.
• Another church did this where fostering was concerned, and six couples responded.

3. Tell stories of engagement whenever you can.

Tell stories of how other churches and individuals are doing it. You will find a growing list of these in the Encounter section.

More importantly, tell stories from inside your church of how your small groups or individuals are doing it. Get them up on the platform, or ask them to write in your church magazine. Tell us here at Care for the Family about your stories of engagement so that we can share them with others. In some ways the smaller the story the better - they don’t need to be sensational.

You need people to feel that they could do it. It’s best not to call it community engagement or mission. Let it stand as an example of the normal way that Christians live.

4. Genuinely set people free to do random acts of kindness and engagement.

If you say they have permission, make sure they do. It’s great when you find out months into something that they’ve been doing that it’s proving to be successful - and they didn’t feel the need to ask you if they could do it! It’s at moments like this that church starts to take on a life all its own, and engagement is becoming part of the DNA of the church.

Last Updated 09 February 2009