Mobilising the church

Welcome to the Mobilising the church zone!

At Tearfund we believe that local churches around the world can make an immense contribution to overcoming poverty, at a local, national, and international level. Their passion, rootedness in the community, commitment to relationships and spiritual hope mean that they can be tremendous agents of transformation.

This zone is all about how we can best envision and equip local churches for their role of transformation. Whether you are a Christian relief and development agency like ourselves, a Christian denomination, a Christian NGO or charity, a local church leader, or a church member, in this zone we hope you will find everything you need (ideas, principles, stories, examples, resources) to help you to mobilise the local church to take action in her community.

In this zone we explore a number of exciting approaches to mobilising the church. Click here for help in deciding which approach may be most relevant to you, or click on the individual links in the table below for more detail on specific approaches.

Tearfund have also published an exciting and comprehensive set of training manuals called Umoja for those who want to envision and equip the local church to work for transformation in their communities. Click here for more details.

 

General approaches to mobilising the church	Approaches focused on mobilising the church specifically on…
Envisioning the church for integral mission	Advocacy
Church mobilisation	HIV and AIDS
Church and community mobilisation	Disaster management
Church leadership development

These are not the only ways of mobilising churches, but we hope this resource acts as a starting point. 

Alternatively, you may want to start by finding out answers to a number of important questions first: 

• What do we mean by ‘church’?
• Why is the local church so important to the work of Christian development?
• What is the role of Christian NGOs, and how should they relate to the local church?
• What are some of the challenges to working with the local church and how can these be overcome?
• What is integral mission (a term which is increasingly used around the world by churches and development agencies to refer to ministry that addresses practical and spiritual needs in the community)?  

If you would like to offer a case study of your own church mobilisation work, please do get in touch with us at tilz@tearfund.org. You may find the following guidance and case study format helpful when writing your case study.  

Tearfund is also part of a wider network of organisations and groups committed to mobilising the church for integral mission, called the Micah Network.  They run a social networking website aimed at sharing case studies, inspiration and best practice from across different regions.  Click here to visit their website.