“Faith-based nonprofits are a wonderful platform for God’s people to use their gifts in service to their community,” Harris told Baptist Press. “Whatever problem the nonprofit is trying to solve, they provide access – a connecting point – between God’s people and lost people who are in need.”
Mission Increase has 23 chapters in the U.S. serving 3,500 nonprofits, Harris said, including a Mission Increase chapter Brentwood Baptist Church in Brentwood helped organize in middle Tennessee seven years ago. Four of the six churches supporting the work in middle Tennessee are Southern Baptist, he said.
“We are now a faith-based biblical learning community of 247 faith-based nonprofits in middle Tennessee,” Harris said, “that gather regularly for teaching, equipping and coaching, all at no cost.”
Harris, former missions pastor at Brentwood Baptist, met Orr through joint mission work between Brentwood and Brown Baptist, a suburban Memphis church in Southaven, Miss.
Orr sees Mission Increase and Brown Baptist’s support of nonprofits as important to the holistic community outreach the church promotes.
“Memphis is going through so many different challenges,” Orr said, “and yet, we can be on the forefront to not only see successful change, but kind of set the example for the rest of the country on how things ought to happen.
“We’re praying and hoping that God will use all of this, ultimately, to bring about a spiritual revival and awakening in Memphis and throughout our country,” Orr said. “Just looking holistically at the pieces, they all fit.”
Harris sees the work as not only beneficial to nonprofits, but also to the local church, providing healthy parachurch ministries for church members to work within. He encourages churches and nonprofits to visit Mission Increase at missionincrease.org to connect with local Mission Increase coaches or launch a local chapter.
“There is the beauty when they work together and they value each other,” Harris said, “it can grow a local church.”
Orr encourages others to support church-community group engagement as a win-win.
“As we continue this great endeavor with Channel 3, I pray that we take it to a whole next level and that is cooperation and collaboration,” Orr said in revealing the church as the donor on WREG. “We need more churches. We need more organizations coming together, banding together, and solving the problem, doing something specifically in our community to make a difference.”
This article originally appeared on BaptistPress.com.
