Authentic community engagement highlighted at Literacy Missions/CJC conference

By Megan Young
Associate Editor

CLINTON — Connecting your community to your church’s ministries is no longer just about opening the doors and expecting people to show up, according to Brian Crawford, speaker at the State Literacy Missions and Christian Women’s/Men’s Job Corps Conference held July 24-26 at Garaywa Camp & Conference Center.

“People have to be engaged, they have to be connected to deeply, they have to be convinced almost that you care,” said Crawford, pastor of City Light Church in Vicksburg and president of Mission Mississippi. “Their trust has to be earned.”

‘A disconnected ministry is a dying ministry’

Churches can offer all the ministry programs in the world, but if they remain insulated from their community, they will not thrive. Simply put, Crawford said, “A disconnected ministry is a dying ministry.”

Using the illustration of the Samaritan woman at the well from John 4, Crawford offered three ways churches can authentically connect with the people they are trying to serve: study your community, love your community and reach your community.

Like international missionaries entering a foreign country, churches should seek to learn everything about the people and culture of the community around them with a posture of humility in order to earn an opportunity for missional engagement.

“Connecting to our communities requires a level of humility that acknowledges that every neighborhood has its own uniqueness and strives to know that uniqueness and understand that uniqueness,” Crawford said. “The problem is we take that approach to foreign fields. We do not take that approach oftentimes to domestic fields.”

Instead, churches fall into the trap of one-way ministry exchange with the community, providing goods and services without ever taking the time to get to know the people. Crawford suggested intentionally asking questions that extend beyond surface level so people feel seen and known.

“Try to find windows where you can create connection and lead with that,” Crawford said. “Because if you lead with connection, you’ll deepen the impact of the agenda and deepen the impact of the program.”

‘Get to know them. Let them get to know us’

“What does it mean in order to formulate and forge deeper connection in our community?” Crawford asked.

The Literacy Missions and Christian Women’s/Men’s Job Corps Conference sought to answer that question by providing participants with practical tools and skills to engage their communities with ministry. Literacy Missions workshops included English as a Second Language (ESL), Adult Reading and Writing (ARW) and Tutoring Children and Youth (TCY). Christian Job Corps seminars covered topics such as “The Power of Encouragement,” “Heart Smarts: Understanding Emotional Intelligence in Ministry” and “Empowered by Innovation: Using AI to Serve with Purpose.”

Three volunteers from Handsboro Church in Gulfport — Joyce Wilson, Michelle Barnes and Trish MacDonald — attended the conference to learn how to start an ESL program to better relate to their increasingly diverse community.

Handsboro Church already has a food pantry ministry, but the volunteers were aware of a language barrier preventing them from fully engaging with the people they were serving. ESL was a natural next step in the church’s outreach.

“Our current pastor really wanted to get this program started,” MacDonald said. “For me, it’s just another way to get more ingrained with the church as we start something up to do outreach in our community and help a lot of those people just be able to function in their environments, in their work or whatever. But also bringing them in to worship with us.”

“That is just something I think we need big time to be able to plant a seed of the Gospel to these people by being able to communicate with them,” Wilson said. “Get to know them, let them get to know us. I just think it is a marvelous way to be able to do it.”

By attending the workshops and seminars at the conference, the volunteers learned from others who have started similar ESL programs in their churches and realized that the task is doable for anyone obedient to God’s call to go and make disciples.

“One of the biggest things I’ve learned, is that I don’t have to see the seed grow to fruition,” Barnes said. “I just need to be able to plant the seed and to show people that I care because I do care about other people.”

Literacy Missions and Christian Job Corp are supported by gifts to the Margaret Lackey State Offering. For more information about the offering, visit margaretlackey.com.