EPISODE 013 – SHOW NOTES – DEVELOPING MINISTRY WITH THE HURTING
For this week’s podcast, we were joined by Matthew Ayers, CEO of Dream Centers of Colorado Springs to talk about how the local church can lead the way in serving the most vulnerable people in their cities.
Churches are notoriously bad listeners… the Christian community in America needs to do a better job of asking better questions and listening to the city’s response, and then stepping to the front of the line to meet those needs…
It was amazing to me how much good work was happening in our city that we didn’t know about… when we began to explore the areas of pain in our city, we began to unearth some amazing ministries…
The early church had a commitment to care for the poor… they took it more seriously than we take it…
Most of the people in our church were not aware of the brokenness that was happening in our city… what the Dream Centers brought to New Life was an awareness of the poor… now that they know, I don’t have any trouble motivating them to get involved…
The senior pastor of the church has to carry this in a deep way or it will become just a little project on the side…
I’ve discovered that this has become a discipleship mechanism for us… people are discovering that they can use what they have to be a blessing to others…
The poor are not a problem to be solved but a people to be joined… if you’re not regularly looking into the eyes of the poor, you are probably not seeing Jesus…
God’s Spirit is already incredibly active… if we will do the hard work of slowing down, paying attention, talking and listening to others that are already engaged in this way, we have a lot to learn…
Any time we get serious about taking care of the poor of our city, you will never lack for resources to do it…
QUESTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR TEAM
1 – On a scale of 1-10, how important is caring for the poor to you and your ministry? Why did you give it the number you did?
2 – What can you begin to do to raise this value in your own heart and in the heart of your congregation?
3 – What would it look like for you to begin genuinely listening to the needs of your city?
4 – How can you begin?
RESOURCES
Ray Bakke – Theology as Big as a City