Ministry Ideas: Connect

“Connect” is a brand new ministry, and we don’t have much in the way of results to report. But here’s the idea.

As mentioned in the last post about the school supply drive, we have members working to serve a high-crime housing project in town. And most of the effort is being focused on the children there. The idea of “Connect” is for a couple at our church to “adopt” a child from the projects, taking him to church, tutoring him, and otherwise helping out. And so now we have these white, middle class couples at church, most with their own kids, sitting at church with a black kid from the projects right alongside their own kids.

When we had a Sunday night covered dish dinner the other night, there were the Connect couples managing their own kids and one extra borrowed child from the projects. And it seemed to work pretty well. Surprisingly well, actually.

LIke I said, it’s all pretty new, so there aren’t any results to report except that, well, amazingly enough, some of our couples actually agreed to do this! I mean, when the announcement was first made, I just didn’t have the faith to think many couples would take this on. But many did! I am amazed at the hearts of our members and the power of the Spirit.

Now, I am instinctively skeptical about such efforts because I came up during the days of the bus ministry. If you’re my age or older, you remember churches that bought entire fleets of buses to bring in poor black kids by the hundreds in church after church — and it didn’t work. Maybe 1% or 2% of the kids were helped, but on the whole, it was a noble failure.

But I think this is different. You see, rather than busing kids in en masse and expecting them to be transformed by the preacher and Bible class teachers, these kids are being cared for by a married couple, most with children. They are getting surrogate parents. And parents shape kids. Buses do not.