Biblical Basis for Neighborhood Transformation

Neighborhood Transformation’s Cause Is:
Equipping churches to assist neighborhoods out poverty and people to maturity in Christ.
The Biblical Basis for our Cause
Participate in God’s mission to restore all creation to wholeness by being faithful witnesses in Word and Deed through Gods redeeming love and work.
• Luke 10:27 Love God totally in areas of your life which deals with whole person and reach out to your neighbor in love as you would for yourself.
• Luke 4:18 &19, Isa 61:2&3. Deal with the whole person by reaching to them in all areas of their life.
• Luke 9:1,2 & Luke 10, 1,8,9, Paul sends out 12 and 72 disciples to reach out wholistically to others
• Matthew 28:18-10, We are to teach all God has commanded us to do which is to deal wholistically with people.

What the Bible Calls Us To Do In Relation To Our Cause
• Love all people and reach out to them don’t wait for them to come to me.
• Love requires a relationship therefore must get to know people can’t just give people things.
• When we do things for people that they should be doing for themselves we actually hurt not love them.
• The goal is a ministry that deals with all areas of a person life thereby transforming them from the inside out and then these people in a given neighborhood are transforming their neighborhood in the same way.

How Our Cause Intersects With A Regular Person
• It gets people out of their comfort zone and into the neighborhood which is a hard step for many middle-class people to do.
• When we do things for people we (which we are inclined to do) we make them dependent on others which is not showing love. We have to equip people with a different worldview of empowering not doing things for others.

Do you have an interest in Neighborhood Transformation’s Cause?
There are many ways you can become involved where you are. Contact Stan@neighborhoodtransformation.net to learn about them.

Can the Poor Change If So How Might a Neighborhood Look?

This is the third blog on Poverty. We have looked at what is Poverty and what groups are ofter found in poverty. Then we looked at ways that facilitate transformed individuals.

Now Some of You Want to Ask Does This Happen?
The answer is a resounding yes if we build on the assets of people in the neighborhood starting with what they want to do. A relationship with Jesus Christ is essential and people growing to maturity in Him, not remaining as a new born. Then these transformed individuals as an aggregate begin to transform their neighborhood using the assets that are there. the neighborhood changes from the inside out.

Desired Results in a Transformed Neighborhood
If the ‘What If’ questions were answered and some of the steps taken described in an earlier blog, we might expect to see some of the following results:
1. Increased knowledge, skills, and resources benefiting individuals throughout the neighborhood.
2. Transformed individuals who are capable of reproducing themselves in others in transformational ways.
3. These results are multiplied throughout a neighborhood and the neighborhood is transformed from the inside out.
4. People are taking more responsibility for their own lives, in all areas.
5. The program is integrated into the neighborhood infrastructure, with the neighborhood leaders taking responsibility. New leaders are emerging neighborhood by neighborhood.
6. There is a growing sense of community.
7. People view the program as their own, rather than belonging to an outside agency.
8. The programs are neighborhood funded rather than funds coming from the outside.
9. The program continues after outside assistance has left the neighborhood.
10. Improvement in social indicators such as education and economics, and a decrease in crime and divorce rates.
11. The program expands to adjacent areas through local training teams, after the initial training team leaves.
12. The entire city is being transformed in all spheres of life, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Change Driven by Grace
We are seeing results in transformational ministry that impact the whole person, in many different religious settings, rural and urban, throughout the world over and above our wildest dreams! The Lord calls each of us who are ministering in His name to deal with people as whole persons: physically, spiritually, emotionally, and socially. The starting point and center of good health is our Lord Jesus Christ. He is working to build His Kingdom.

What Neighborhood Transformation is All about

Some people have asked me “Exactly what is Neighborhood all about” so I wrote this to share with people.

When a church in a new city asks for an Envisioning Seminar, we ask them to bring people from multiple churches together for this five hour training. From the seminar, we hope to find three to five local churches that are interested in trying the NT approach in working with people in their target neighborhood.

The next step involves training church members to be a Facilitation Team. These trainings can be done either segmented, six Saturdays, or in three weekends, spread over 18 months. Typically, we have laypeople from three to five churches coming together for the training. They also begin small group wholistic training in churches.

After the training, each church team explores 3-5 nearby neighborhoods for potential to begin. Each team then chooses their own nearby underserved neighborhood. The team begins to identify assets of individuals and builds a data base of the assets found in the area. They also begin to visit religious leaders, government, non-profits, and local groups in their chosen neighborhood to find out who is doing what, and to begin to develop relationships with them. The idea is to work together, not to compete with them.

The team presents their findings to the people and asks them for their dreams for their neighborhood. Then a matching can take place, matching people’s interests and assets to individuals and associations in the neighborhood. The team then begins teaching multiple small groups based on the people’s specific topic of interest.

The neighborhood elects a neighborhood association, if there is none, and they are trained in how the program works. After the training, the association chooses local people as Neighborhood Agents of Change (NAC). The NACs are trained for 30 to 50 sessions on topics of the neighborhood’s interest. The NACs begin visiting their neighbors sharing what they have learned as the training is going on.

An association of churches from throughout the city, which are doing Neighborhood Transformation, start to meet together in order to learn from each other and impact their city.