Here’s the picture: you’re a single mom or widow (or a single dad or widower or someone who is disabled) and you’d absolutely love for your church to form a team for you to help you out around your home once a month for two hours. In fact, you desperately need a team like this. But you’re too embarrassed to ask because you feel it would be self serving. And to top it off, your church has no idea what men’s team ministry to their widowed and single parents is because no one at church has ever heard of New Commandment Men’s Ministries.
If that picture describes you, then I want to do two things. I want to disabuse you of your idea that suggesting a men’s team ministry to your church would be self serving. Then I want to give you some practical suggestions on how to motivate your church to do men’s team ministry.
First of all, regarding the self serving issue, start thinking of yourself as an advocate, both for single parents and the widowed in your church who are in the same situation as you and for the men in your church who need this ministry just as much as you all do.
It is highly probable that there are others in your church who are single parents and widowed. If your church is like most churches, it’s clueless about how to minister to people like you. Your fellow congregants see you showing up at church regularly and they think you’re all doing fine. Their lives are full with family and work. But they have no idea how lonely and needy you all may be.
So your role is to become an advocate for your fellow single parents and widowed. First of all, start praying and ask the Lord to open the eyes of your congregation to your needs. Secondly, start talking to people in your church on an individual basis. Share the need with them and simply ask them what they think about the church starting a ministry to people in your situation. Leave the idea of ministry very general.
You might ask your pastor if he could preach a sermon on the needs of single parents and the widowed. There are many, many Scripture passages he could choose from.
You can also be an advocate for the men in your church. Men need men’s team ministry just as much as single moms and widows do. The reason is because the men in your church need an outlet for the good works God saved them to do. Serving single moms and widows will give the men’s ministry in your church, if it has one, purpose and direction. So talk to your men’s ministry director about the possibility of doing something for single moms and widows.
Now that you’ve become an advocate for other single moms and widows, as well as for the men in your church, and have raised awareness about the problem, you need to provide a solution to the problem. My suggestion is that you join Meeting to Meet Needs, our online training membership site, and thoroughly acquaint yourself with men’s team ministry. Then share your membership with your pastor or men’s ministry director and ask them what they think. (But don’t do this until you’ve patiently laid the groundwork of advocacy.) Be sure to present men’s team ministry to your church leadership as an option, not the only option.
So what if you do all of this and your church still says no. What then? Then start visiting other widows and single moms in their homes yourself. You can’t (and shouldn’t) force your church to do anything. But you can be an example.
This post originally appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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