Home Pastors Articles for Pastors What Happened When the Mayor Got in This Pastor’s Face

What Happened When the Mayor Got in This Pastor’s Face

2. We changed the way we did missions.

We realized that “missions” was about more than sending people overseas.

Consider the words of Jesus in Acts 1:8. We are to be witnesses in Jerusalem (home town), and Judea, and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the world. 

Jesus didn’t say Jerusalem ‘or’ Judea he said ‘and’ … which means missions is more than just Russia and Rwanda, it’s Red Oak, Texas, as well.

So we created a compassion strategy that focused on three different facets of ministry in our community—orphan and foster care, mentorship, and poverty. We picked these three focuses because the city officials told us they were the biggest problems in our county.

We began hosting foster care seminars at our church to equip our community to open their homes to children in need, we partnered with local schools to provide mentors and tutors for students, and we began reaching out specifically to single moms with financial needs and kids who were living below the poverty line.

The people in our church wanted to engage with the hurting people in our community. We just had to get creative and provide opportunities for them to do it.

When we did, our ministry began to grow.