How do I start a ministry and get the community involved?

[Julie Martin]

Question from reader: How do I start a ministry and get the community involved?

It’s so great to come and share in this after we have just experienced our third year doing an outreach in our own home town of Grand Rapids. God has been so faithful and year after year it gets bigger and bigger and we are reaching more and more people with the love of Jesus Christ.

In building your own ministry, I feel one of the most important steps to take is planning your vision, sharing your vision and building a team. I put all these together because they all work together. When you have planned your vision then you can share your vision and that will help you build a team. For example, when we felt we were lead to do an outreach in our town, we first shared our vision with a local Pastor in the inner city. He was onboard right away and gave us the where to do it and gave us other names that could help us out with food. As the word went from one person to the next, people started calling us and letting us know how they could help.

The next important step is praying, and praying about everything. Pray for favor everywhere you go. A friend of mine shared with me how she went into a store to buy paper and they would only let her buy so many for this outreach. I told her I would go to the store near me and that I was praying for favor to buy as many as I wanted. Sure enough I went in, talk to the store manager, and walked out with as many as I wanted. Pray, Pray, Pray!

Last thing and this can be one of the hardest; time. It reminds me of the scripture “In due time.” Again, I just told you this is our third year in doing this outreach. It is just now growing to the point that we first envisioned it. But it has taken some time, some learning and some growing pains. And it is all worth it!

Julie "Jewels" Martin