A Collective Cleanup
It was a warm Saturday morning and a group from Christ Community came together to give their time and energy for a neighborhood cleanup initiative. They began by praying for the city’s flourishing and our witness, and then they went about in teams picking up trash and pulling weeds that had tainted the sidewalks and surrounding businesses. Equipped with neighborhood trash bags, the teams worked in collaboration with the neighborhood association to identify what streets needed the most attention.
While cleaning, one of the residents noticed what was happening and asked, “Who are you with? Why are you doing this?” A member of the group responded, “We’re from Christ Community. We love our neighborhood and wanted to serve in some way.” The look on the person’s face who asked the question was one of surprising delight. No more words were exchanged, but a lot was said in so little. In this collective clean-up initiative one person had the chance to see a church with Christ in the name that cares enough to serve together above and beyond their walls.
Why Outreach Ministry
In this series, we’ve discussed our belief that the church needs a more biblical paradigm shift from merely seeing a few called to “missions” to an all inclusive “missional” model. Additionally we’ve outlined some key principles of the church as a missional institution. Now we will explore how outreach, as a ministry within a missional church, uniquely contributes to the overall mission.
As shown in the true story above, Christ Community seeks to missionally leverage the collective resources, gifts, and vocational skills of the congregation for the salvation of the lost and common good of all. We do this through strategic partnerships and initiatives. This mobilization of gospel proclamation and demonstration is integral to every ministry focus, while also uniquely catalyzed in our collective efforts by our outreach ministries.
Where Outreach Ministries Works
The backbone of Christ Community’s outreach is a shared philosophy and collaborative budgeting approach, which engages strategic areas across the city and the world, but the bulk of the outreach ministry work happens with the hands and hearts of specific campus leaders.
Each campus has an Outreach Team made up of staff and volunteers who determine a strategic focus at their campus based upon the demographics and contextual needs surrounding that campus. While that strategic focus is locally owned, six values give unifying boundaries for collaboration across our neighborhoods, our city, and the world. These flow and affirm our overall outreach philosophy shared in parts 1 and 2 of this blog series. They are as follows:
- We value the local church and desire to see her flourish.
- We value gospel proclamation that addresses individual and systemic brokenness.
- We value long-term mutual relationships with partnering organizations and leaders.
- We value asset-based community development that leverages the resources of marginalized voices and the vulnerable.
- We value collaborative efforts that do not compete with but enhance other gospel-driven initiatives.
- We value campus ownership of partnerships in determining their own strategic areas of focus.
These values are a starting point in discerning which institutions to partner with as well as which initiatives to engage. To ensure shared language, partnerships are long-term mutual relationships with organizations who align with our values where we work together in one of our strategic areas of focus, while initiatives are short-term or long-term projects we engage in for strategic purposes, and can be done with or without outside organizations. For example, the neighborhood cleanup above is an initiative that a campus owned and yet simultaneously sought a collaborative planning process with the neighborhood association.
Outreach Partners as Institutions
While initiatives can take on urgent or unique relief needs, we believe the most effective, fruitful, developmental partnerships that cultivate deep renewal are with institutions. This decision [see Outreach at Christ Community Part 2 blog] comes from a series of convictions, listed here, which are the fruit of much conversation, deliberation, and prayer over our shared history.
Institutions partner better with institutions. Christ Community is an institution and as such, we are best equipped to build partnerships with other institutions. When these are truly partnerships, we see mutual and shared benefits; which happens best from institution to institution. We learn from each other and care for one another in reciprocal ways on mission together.
Institutions last longer. Institutions are designed to outlast us. We want to invest in that which outlasts us. We want to make wise, long term, and far-reaching investments in order to do the most good.
Institutions change less frequently. Individual missionaries get reassigned, change locations, change mission organizations, change calling and focus, and eventually retire. If we want to partner well, we want to build relationships long term with communities of people in a particular area, doing a particular task. Otherwise we are at risk of our relationships with communities being one-sided at best or paternalistic at worst.
Institutions can provide greater support, training and oversight. Missional institutions are able to zero in on best practices, navigate cultural nuance, support indigenous leadership, and specialize in crucial training that will lead to greater health and robust impact over the long haul. Accountability is a natural outcome of an institution with a healthy organizational culture. Institutional excellence adds one more layer of financial oversight and missional alignment.
Finding the Right Outreach Partners
Each campus works within our outreach framework to select partners and develop initiatives evaluating categories like the value both campus and partner bring to the partnership, whether congregants are able to utilize their gifts in a meaningful way or not, philosophical alignment, and assessing specific care for the vulnerable. In addition to assessing if a healthy partnership is possible, we also assess organizational health for sustainable ministry within that institution.
It’s important to note two additional points. First, most nonprofits and institutions that are healthy really want these kinds of partnerships. Too often churches want organizations that are under-resourced and overextended to create an experience for their church whether it be at best, a meaningful serving experience or, at worst, voyeurism around poverty. To have a mutual partnership for sustained work is a gift to ministries in our city. Secondly, while campus specific partnerships make up the majority of our outreach, we also have some broader national partnerships that provide accountability, catalyze our mission on a national scale, and engage in relief during catastrophes (2 Corinthians 9).
Throughout the history of Christ Community, we have partnered with various institutions for the common good of human flourishing and the uncommon good of the gospel. By way of example, we have sought to partner with institutions and engage in initiatives concerning:
- community development
- education
- job creation
- supporting efforts to end human trafficking
- care for the unborn and their mothers
- attending to widows and orphans
- Bible distribution
- welcoming immigrants and refugees
- church planting
- evangelism in unreached or de-churched areas of the world
- developing pastors and leaders to lead
For a full list of our current partners, please go HERE.
If you see a strategic area of focus missing from our church, please reach out to your campus pastor. Every campus is seeking to be a faithful presence both locally and globally in thoughtful and sustainable ways. While Christ Community cannot collectively partner with every institution around every important area of justice, mercy, and evangelism, we always value exploring ways we can be praying and encouraging God’s people in their callings.
It is the responsibility of missional churches to partner with mobile missional agencies (e.g. partners) who are strategically located for the sake of a flourishing gospel ecosystem across the city and world, but to do so in a way that stewards God’s resources wisely over the long-haul. Designed-based giving (Giving God our Best: God’s Design for Generosity) where the local church is still God’s plan A for the conduit of generosity thereby allows us to extend the trust God’s people have for their church into excellent missional institutions that may be overlooked. This means giving to this missional church is also giving through a missional church to vetted, strategic, and healthy partner ministries across our neighborhoods, city and world.
Reaching Further
Recently I talked with a leader of one of our outreach partners that we’ve partnered with for over 15 years. The trust and joy was palpable. We told stories of what God has done over the years, how our collaboration has been a gift for both communities, how both institutions have grown in effectiveness, and joy over the future of serving God’s purposes together in Kansas City. We need to continue to expand our horizon line for what counts as God’s mission and see the whole of the church and everything the church does as “on mission”. We need to not only think about the present and engage initiatives that are urgent, but imagine what God could do for the flourishing of neighborhoods, our city, and the world 50, 60, or 75 years from now if the Lord should wait to return. While we are all called to be missional in our vocations, outreach has a role in cultivating our collective presence through strategic partnerships in deep and lasting work for the gospel.
And crucial as all this is, there’s one more vital way this works out that we often don’t consider. We’ll dedicate the final blog to this important pathway; multiplication.
Additional Resources
Outreach at Christ Community – Part 1
Outreach at Christ Community – Part 2
[1] While both need-based and asset-based strategies have their place in certain church contexts, asset-based community development (ABCD) requires relationship, time, and seeing the possibilities that are already available within a community. ABCD focuses on encouraging the potential latent in a community rather than assuming a community has nothing to offer to the needs within their community. ABCD requires humility to support the dignity and good work of others who are already in the situation or community rather than centering attention on oneself and one’s assumptions toward a solution. For more see Robert D. Lupton, Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help, And How to Reverse It, 1st edition (HarperOne, 2012), 177.
