In recent times, TRACI is involved with emerging churches with the primary objective to train and help the churches understand Integral Mission and practice it since most churches have an inadequate understanding of the Scripture. Many who migrate to cities and large towns live on the margins of society and struggle even to cover their basic needs. One can find several churches in most of these poor communities. A majority of these congregations are extremely poor including their pastors or leaders ministering and serving these churches.
A narrow view on combining a livelihood option with their ministry and the lack of proper education or skills further exacerbates their situation. It is unfortunate that there is hardly any substantial financial assistance made available for these Pastors and their congregations. Some who are able to access funding find the assistance is very limited to even reasonably cover their needs. Additionally, there are major limitations constantly being enforced on funding sources and the trajectory of this regulatory restriction is only set to increase even further in the days ahead.
It is these combined factors that call for exploring new ways of engaging these churches and their leaders in multiple ways. So the effort is also to engage the whole church and particularly the Pastors to build a sustainable livelihood.
Current Progress on Church Engagement
- The person leading this whole initiative is also a pastor. He has joined our part-time staff and is trained and assigned the role of leading the engagement.
- Baseline data which covers education, livelihood, financial status, skills, gifts, interests, accessing government facilities, etc. of the entire congregations family-wise has been collected and collated to capture the origin of the journey and to provide direction for the kind of engagement required. The planning stage also employed a participatory model of engaging the church leaders and members. Training has been initiated for 8 church leaders and pastors once a month on Integral Mission.
- Church members who have a graduate degree are now enlisted to give time on a weekly basis and give tuition for these children on the church premises.
- Members from the church, trained as tailoring teachers will start tailoring classes to give part-time training to women in the church who are unemployed and uneducated. This will open up opportunities for tailoring jobs in textile firms and shops in Delhi.
- A six months Integral Mission training course for 10 pastors from other emerging churches will be initiated to enable them to address situations in their own church towards a holistic development.
Do partner with us in this important engagement knowing the impact it is going on many of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Even as we look to God to provide for the needs of the programme we also reach out to you as fellow believers to share prayerfully and financially in this endeavour.