Remember the Poor: Ministry Principles for Serving Communities of Need

Remember the Poor: Ministry Principles for Serving Communities of Need

Stephen Trainer | 2023

Abstract

Jesus calls the church and its disciples to remember the poor. He prioritizes care for the marginalized and downtrodden. The upside-down king of an upside-down kingdom, Jesus said that the first will be last, the last will be first, and whatever we do to serve the least we do for him. Still, ministering to the poor in ways that are sustainable and that preserve the dignity of those in need requires wisdom, tact, and experience.

There are plenty of situations that you might encounter when leading ministry in communities of need that just didn’t come up in a textbook. That’s a part of leadership – being able to respond to the unforeseen. Many other texts will give you some practical tools in addition to theory, but I found that there are far fewer resources for people specifically called to serve in communities of need. Marginalized, forgotten, impoverished communities. The kind of communities we are warned to avoid, but that Jesus loves and died to save.

Because God had given his people a message of hope and commissioned them to take it to the ends of the earth, he must be calling people to the hard places, but we will often be unprepared for the things we encounter when we get there. This book details a series of leadership principles specific to the marginalized context, serving the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind.They were fashioned by the Graffiti Network family of ministries as they served the hard places of New York City for nearly five decades and are here wrapped in stories and experiences we’ve seen first-hand that illustrate their value. My hope is that this book provides you with the same tools that allowed our ministry to impact a lot of lives in a positive and redemptive way.