One of the things we aim to do at TEAR Fund is equip churches to fulfill their mission to be ‘salt and light’ in their communities. To that end we offer a process called Discovery, that enables churches to pursue community development in their own geographical areas. TEAR Fund’s Discovery process is a gift from us to the Church and can really help churches that have a desire to reach out and serve but are struggling to work out how or just need a little more intentionality and structure to what they already do.
Facilitating Discovery Training in Kerikeri with Rob.
Developed in the UK, TEAR Fund’s Discovery process offers an interactive, hands on, easy to learn/follow/do process for meeting needs within a community. It equips a church to understand the resources it has, see needs in the community, develop community relationships and undertake research, develop ideas for meeting those needs, start a project and then undertake the ongoing evaluation, monitoring and improving of that work.
Built for people who don’t have development expertise, it takes high level concepts and makes them easy to understand and extremely interactive. It works even for someone like me.
Last week my colleague (Rob) and I had the wonderful opportunity to train a group of ministry leaders from various Northland Anglican churches on how to facilitate TEAR Fund’s Discovery process with a small group within their own church communities. It was a reminder for me about how effective it is. Not only is it a fun process to go through, it’s also extremely fun and rewarding to facilitate.
It was very satisfying watching the many ‘lightbulb-moments’ that were taking place for people as they connected their faith to their desire to serve their communities, but not only that, to also watch their thoughts processes about how they understood the places of their churches within their communities.
Each of them came from small churches and many of them carried the despondency that, when faced with the needs in their communities, they weren’t able to do much, if anything. It was inspiring to see their level of belief in what they could do rise as they went through the Discovery process, interacting with the tools and learning the thinking behind it. It was also good to see people grasp that they don;t have to save the world, they just have to do something.
It’s easy to look at large social problems and not do anything because the issues seem so big. TEAR Fund’s Discovery process gives tools to evaluate those issues, break them down to bite sized chunks, check those things against the resources available and to then see what we can do and find a way to do it.
If you’re in a church and wanting to better engage with your community in a way that truly is about serving them, I’d strongly suggest getting in touch with us to chat about TEAR Fund’s Discovery process. I have no doubt that it’s a process that you would find truly helpful no matter where in the community development journey you sit. If this interests you, flick me a message using my contact page.