5.1 Community Development Principles Can Be Applied to Missions Mobilization.

5.1 Community Development Principles Can Be Applied to Missions Mobilization. 

When you hear the term “community development,” what comes to mind? I don’t know if you are like me, but I used to think only in terms of like, water wells or agricultural projects, right? Well, for a moment, let’s just set those images aside and try to get in touch with the principles behind community development.

There are Community Development Principles that have so much wisdom and gold in them on how to enter communities well. And this is so important because we are always entering communities! Whether we're called to go to the unreached, we were entering unreached communities. Whether we are called to missions mobilization and discipleship in the church, we are entering communities. Those local churches and our own families are communities. And there's ways to enter a community well that open doors and there's ways to do it not so well that close doors. And so community development principles have so much wisdom for how to enter a community in a way that actually empowers, preserves dignity, creates ownership, allows people to discover new methods and even new worldview ideas that bring transformation and blessing to that whole community. And there's also of course, ways to enter a community that disempower, that create dependency, that actually leave them in a worse state than they were before we arrived. We don't want that.

So, as we've been saying in the past, "Mobilization is to the reached what evangelization is to the unreached. Missions mobilization is to the body of Christ, what evangelization is to the unreached." So, these same principles that we've learned on how to enter an unreached people group in a good life-giving way; those same principles can be applied to missions mobilization.

And so, for example, "God is already there" is one principle. We didn't bring God to that  community. God was already there and we want to come alongside of what He's doing. "Development starts with me", that's another principle. I need to be walking out the things that I hope to see in the lives of those that I'm influencing. “Deal with the roots not just the fruits", that's another principle. We don't want to just judge the negative fruit that we see, we want to actually evaluate and discern what is going on in the belief system in the worldview roots that are leading to this fruit.

We want to “Identify a man of peace.” We want to go in as “learners and servants and storytellers.” We want to “start small and build slow.” We want to actually “not do for people what they can and should be doing for themselves.” We want to “pass the baton.” We want to “delegate and give people, empower them, to take and run with things right near the beginning of the whole project.” All of these are community development principles and you can see we have been applying them among the unreached. But they really have a lot of  wisdom and insight into how to actually do missions mobilization as well. So let's think, in future videos unpack, some of these principles of how we can apply specific community development principles to missions mobilization. 

Let's Process Together!

  • What is one community you are entering, and what wisdom do you have for entering that community well?
  • How have you thought about community development principles in the past?

Application Assignment!

  • Please share your thoughts in the SOMA - To All Nations Telegram Group (or in the comment section).
  • Write down one or two things you can do to more effectively enter the community you are mobilizing.


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