Change in Neighborhood Transformation Leadership

Hi All

As many of you have heard  there will be a change of leadership in Neighborhood Transformation. A co-leadership team is taking my place which has been a couple year transition. This will take place March 31st 2018. I will still still be involved as Director Emeritus.

 

Garold Elston is now fully guiding all marketing. Garold been  doing the marketing, traveling to conferences, teaching mentoring projects for 2017 as I mentored him. He also has been an affiliate with his own organization Salvaged Lives.Garold moved from California to Missouri to be more centrally located to better travel all of the cities across the USA. Christian Elston is taking over all of our social media posting under Garold

Jeff Bisgrove  is taking over all administrative functions. Jeff has run his own organization, Arizona Neighborhood Transformation location in Guadalupe  Arizona. He has been doing all of NT administrative functions for several years. Jeff will also take our fund raising activity which they plan to increase.

I will still be involved with being a consultant doing special projects behind the scenes, a few times a year speaking at conferences  as well as continuing to write

What a ride this has been for over almost 40 years when CHE/NT was begun in 1980 in Uganda under Campus Crusade, Then its spread over 10 years to 24 countries in Africa. Then spread primarily by Medical Ambassadors over the next 20 years. Then the introduction of Neighborhood Transformation which is the USA urban ministry.

The past 8 years we have started from scratch starting with the way we did CHE finding what worked here in the USA, who our potential clients are and continually modifying based on what we learned as we see NT being tested in over 25 cities across the USA mostly in urban settings from towns of 15,000 to large cities over a million.

Thank all of you who have been involved in many, many different ways. NT is based on all of you who have been investigating and putting together different elements of NT. This will continue under Garold and Jeff but at a slower rate. Their emphasis is working more closely those of you who are trying to implement the many ways NT gets started and continues until it beginning to transform a place.

They are working on a updated mobile web site which is more geared to today’s world. The blog location will also be changed to the web site.We’ll let you know when it is up and running.

Remember NT is really a template of hundreds of elements that a person does dependent on what they are already doing in a neighborhood.

Never forget NT is all about combining God’s word and his example of showing love to all people. What are you doing to know your neighbor and then engage them in this ministry?

May the lord bless you in this endeavor.

Stan

Download a Free Paper Transforming a Neighborhood

I am writing a new book and each month I am sending out an email on one chapter which you can download for free. I did the first chapter in June on Getting to know your Neighbors. This month the chapter is on Transforming a Neighborhood in your city.

 If you want to learn more click below to download an article on How to Transform an Urban Neighborhood.

https://www.neighborhoodtransformation.net/download.php

Are you interested in transforming a neighborhood in your city?

If so, choosing the appropriate size of neighborhood for your ministry target area is critical.

A neighborhood may be defined as a residential portion of a city that is identified as a geographic place historically by the city. All cities are divided into zones and neighborhoods. A neighborhood might have been recently constructed by a developer, or may be a district which has been around for a hundred years. Neighborhoods can be as large as 15,000 people made up of high density apartment complexes. Many single-family neighborhoods are 3,000 to 4,000 people.

Ministry is most effectively carried out in a small geographic area since the goal is to bring neighbors to meet and identify with each other. Thus, a good way to define a neighborhood is by the elementary school it serves, which is generally 6 to 10 square blocks. This school is in walking distance and can serve as a hub for ministry.

 

God is Involved in our Neighborhoods

A crucial premise for neighborhood ministry is to realize that God is active in our neighborhoods. Thus, from the beginning it is important to discover what God is up to in the world and what it means to be the church as we move back into the neighborhood. God has imparted gifts to the people of our churches. God has already gifted and called ordinary men and women in each of our churches to participate with the Holy Spirit to do ministry.

As we search for how God wants us to be involved in ministry we are well served by asking new questions. Our insights and habits can begin to be reshaped as we ask questions about God, ourselves, and our neighbors. What does it mean to be God’s people in a community? Does God intend to erase the boundary lines of who my neighbor is? When we ask questions in the light of God’s intent, our perspective goes beyond what is inside the church walls but becomes something entirely different.

A local church is called to be a mission oriented people. The reason churches are called into existence is for their members to become God’s missionaries right where they live. For too long local churches assumed that its mission was about getting people to come to them, joining their church in the process. God has a different plan for His people where a local church is shaped by what He is up to in the neighborhoods and communities outside the church’s walls.

Our communities are changing dramatically. They are changing from those homogenized neighborhoods where everyone looked the same. Our neighbors are now a part of the new pluralized, globalized world forming before our eyes. Neighborhoods are now characterized by multiple, competing value systems living side by side in the same community.

Globalization is creating new kinds of neighborhoods across the street and around the corner from where we live. This is the work of the Spirit. As God’s people, we’re being invited to join with the Spirit by “pitching our tent” beside the varieties of cultures living all around us. Our worlds are no longer separated by national and ethnic boundaries. Jesus’ disciples of today will be shaped by engaging their neighborhoods, asking what God is up to and joining God in these places.

If you want to learn more click below to download an article on how to Transform an Urban Neighborhood.  
https://www.neighborhoodtransformation.net/download.php

Are You Interested in Discipleship

If so discipleship is central to what happens in Neighborhood Transformation.

A disciple is a learner with the intent to learn from the master and then pass on what he has learned onto others as he puts it into practice in his own life. It focuses on making obedient disciples. It is not just focused on making  converts. It is also builds  multiplying disciples whose impact  expands Jesus’ kingdom. It is discipleship where people practice their following of Jesus Christ in every act of their daily life. It is where word and deed are  intertwined, not parallel tracks of life. It is a strategy that occurs when a disciple is following God’s direction. It does needs right principles to be applied. It is ongoing, unstoppable and out of control. It is not hierarchical, systematic, or highly structured and tightly managed.

It’s a rapid multiplication of groups and churches. It is not slow, sequential, methodical addition. It’s simply about churches rapidly planting new churches. It is not primarily about expansion of denominations, or growth of organizations. It thrives in an environment of persecution and chaos. It is messy. Disciple making does not do well in a peaceful environment of significant controls, policies, and procedures.

Discipleship focuses on replication. It is not about growing large, highly programmatic, organizations but rapidly multiplying small groups that have a core value of discovering where God is at work by finding a person of peace. It is not about starting church services and inviting people to come. It is about the church emerging from within the culture of the people. It is not about calling the people out of their culture to form a new organization. It’s locally led. While often started by outsiders, it is not led by outsiders who intend someday to turn over the ministry to the people of the community.

It is family-based. It does not seek to extract individual respondents from their families and communities, re-acculturating them and then sending them as semi-outsiders back to their communities, which is powered by ordinary people; unschooled and non-credentialed. It is not driven by highly trained and credentialed professionals. It’s counter-intuitive. It does not fit management theory or organizational development. It’s about developing independent leaders. It is not about building a mass of followers.

It is about simple men and women with the simple gospel for simple people. It is not sophisticated and complex. It’s inexpensive. Once begun, discipleship expands without outside resources at all, which is making disciple-makers of every member. It is not about the few reaching the multitudes. It does not make buildings a priority. The church meets within the community of the people. It places a high level of commitment on the health and welfare of the people; people caring for one another. It is not a strategy of hiring professionals to care for the needs of the people.

Churches never emerge without a heavy commitment to prayer. It has a saturation commitment. It believes in a church for every people. Nor is it about planting a denominational church in every community. The goal is a rapidly expand movement under God’s direction through the people in the neighborhood who want to see God’s kingdom established in their neighborhood.

The goal is a rapidly expanding movement that is growing exponentially neighborhood by neighborhood until it transforms the city. A movement is a group of committed people embracing a common purpose moving towards well-defined goals and who are committed to the spread and multiplication of these objectives. It is based on winning, building, and sending people.

Are you interested in getting a free 10 lesson workshop on Making disciples email me at stan@neighborhoodtransformation.net to get it.