Just People – a new initiative from Tearfund

Tearfund has consistently shown a commitment to assisting churches in discovering the best way that they can engage with their local communities. The church, community and change process that they run has helped many churches.

Just People has been developed through the Community Mission partnership, set up by Tearfund and Livability (which used to be the Shaftesbury Society). It is another way of educating and mobilising the church to consider engagement with the challenges of poverty and injustice both corporately and individually over a 6-week interactive multi-media course. The course pack is made up of a DVD (including all the talks and a church case study for each session), leaders’ book and photocopiable worksheets. It can be run either “Alpha-Style”, or in smaller home-groups.

Its aim is to encourage Christians to respond to poverty with compassion and justice both globally and locally. It intends to take participants on a journey of discovery and is based around Micah 6:8 - "And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

The 6 sessions cover:

• Roots – helping you explore the biblical story and God’s response to poverty and injustice.
• Mission – encouraging you to understand mission biblically and holistically.
• Compassion – exploring what mercy means in practical terms .
• Politics – challenging you to consider the role of the church in speaking out for those who have no voice.  
• Church – asking ‘what does all this mean for our church?’
• Cost – challenging you to consider where God might be asking you to engage.

Integrated into these sessions are pieces of practical action, the most important of which is the Day of Action – a planned day of activity in the local community. Most previous participants have found this part of the course to be the most inspiring and challenging. The hope is that the experience will spur people on to think about continued involvement locally.

You can discover more, watch video clips, and hear stories from those who have already done the course at the website www.communitymission.org.uk

Last Updated 17 July 2009