What are Community Ministries?

Baptcare’s Community Ministries program shares the organisation’s wider aim of “bringing care to life”.

The Community Ministries program works towards strengthening the links between congregations of the Baptist Union and their local communities. In this way Baptcare is helping congregations to BE good news in their local communities.

What are ‘community ministries’?

Community ministries are ways that faith-based groups work with and contribute to their local communities.

Community ministries can be done by individuals, groups, organisations or congregations. The ministries may take the form of

  • Relationships
  • Activities
  • Programs

Community ministries work to connect people in congregations with their neighbours in local communities. Some examples of community ministries in Victoria include:

  • Volunteers working in Community Information Centres, Health Centres, or Neighbourhood houses;
  • Evening meals served each week among the public;
  • Housing programs for students who can’t stay in their own family home;
  • Playgroups and parent support groups;
  • Homework tuition groups;
  • Conversational English classes for people from non-English speaking backgrounds;
  • Counselling centres.

What is offered through Baptcare’s community ministries?

Baptcare supports congregational community ministries through four related strategies.

  1. Providing information about community ministries, including biblical and practical overviews, and resources to do community development.
  2. Consulting with congregations and helping them work through the major steps of community development mentioned earlier to help establish a ministry.
  3. Where appropriate, providing ongoing support to some community ministries through a partnership.
  4. Providing leadership to the broader Christian community through seminars, conferences, networking, and other activities that build capacity for community ministries.

Baptcare helps congregations to

  • Prepare for community ministry through biblical studies and prayer support;
  • Form a team of people to listen for local strengths and needs in the community and the congregation;
  • Develop networks to participate in local programs, or devise new programs and;
  • Help congregations to reflect on their learning and evaluate their contribution to local life.

By working together, congregations and local communities can grow to realise and express their ability to care for one another, and for our wider world.

For more information download this brochure:

And take a look at this seminar presentation: BUV: Life Beyond the Offering Plate.

Other pages about Community Ministries:

 

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