Lessons from a Crazed Youth Leader
It started out one day with a special dessert…frozen twinkies on a platter. I knew he was crazy then. But I learned a few important things too– like the fact that as a believer in Christ, I need to earn the right to be heard. That realization has lead me to develop a needs assessment process for new churches and for restart churches. A process of listening followed by serving. You can learn more about it my my latest newsletter posted at http://www.compassionbydesign.org/newsletter.html
June 13th, 2007 at 6:37 am
Hi David, this past Sunday we had a Leadership Lunch to discuss our needs assessment we call ~ the Community Roots Project! It was hilarious! We went through the list of key informants that you gave us and then we started making assignments of who would interview who. Once we completed the list then it just became outrageously funny.
As we began to talk about our communities leaders a few important contacts surfaced very quickly. For instance, Maria, our deacon’s wife works with the mayor’s wife. So Maria offered to slip her a Community Roots Project brochure. Samit, one of our Indian engineers knows the owner of few Dunkin Donuts (which he goes to everyday) and he says the owner is friends will the most of the police officers in town! One of the leaders in our youth group, Victoria, said she would interview the guidance counselor in her high school. And best of all is Joe, who fixes deli slicers, said he would fix Kebab’s Deli slicer if he can interview the owner ~ who’s been making sandwiches in town for 25 years. To my surprise we were more connected then I thought we were!
We typed up a letter and a brochure talking about the Community Roots Project and now we are stuffing envelops so we can set up some interviews.
Over the past few months we have learned a lot about our town of Middlesex, New Jersey. We had about 50 community surveys come back with comments like:
“I think we need a teen center.” “I wish we had more children’s activities.”
“I’d love to see a community center for tweens and teens.”
“What’s it take to get a Starbucks here?”
We’ll see where these comments take us in our journey. What’s important here is to concentrate on the discover process not a race to finish the project. So far the process has been very telling and lots of fun!
Blessings,
~ Jame
Jamé Bolds is a licensed minister with the Assemblies of God and a Lead Pastor of Christian Life Church. Bolds is also Founder of Compassion New Jersey.