This post is part of a series entitled, “A Comprehensive Church-Based Ministry to Single Moms“.
Maybe you are a single mom, or a pastor, or an elder in your church and you’d like to see something done for the single moms in your church and community. Here are some suggestions on how to start a single moms ministry.
Preparation
Pray – Spend time in prayer asking the Lord to give you his mind and his heart for single moms. Intercede on behalf of the single moms in your church and community. Trust God for the people and resources to begin the ministry.
Research – Study what the Word has to say about single moms and fatherless children. Besides the passages cited in this article, there are many more helpful passages in the word of God about single moms.
Then study the organizations and churches listed in my previous post, as well as any others you may find. Make a list of what you are learning as you do this research. You may even choose one or two of these organizations to help you start your single moms ministry.
Introduce – Make an appointment with your pastor or appropriate staff person and share your burden for starting a single moms ministry and what resources are available to help the church begin. If you are a pastor, you may want to do some preaching on the importance of ministering to single moms.
Implementation
Form a Team – Teams spread out the work, provide continuity of leadership, and increase input and accountability. Find two or three other likeminded people who can help you start your single moms ministry. Make sure at least one single mom is on your team.
Set Goals – Always have specific goals for your single moms ministry. Here are two suggestions for goals: (1) To love single moms and their children into the Kingdom of God by meeting their short term and long term needs. (2) To sustain and equip Christian single moms in the church for godly parenting and service to others.
Develop a Long-Term Plan – This plan should include the kind of leadership structure you will have, what kind of meetings you will have, what resources you can provide, what outside resources you can recommend, how you will publicize your ministry, what funding you will need, and how you will raise it.
Simplify – Simplicity of ministry and ease of execution help guarantee that the ministry will last for decades and not just for a few years. Cut out anything extraneous and labor intensive. Focus on your real goals and review annually how well you are reaching them.
Get Church Approval – Make sure everything you do has prior approval from your church leadership.
Execution
Reach Out – Publicize your ministry in your church using the usual methods. But also reach out into the community by posting notifications where single parents go, such as laundromats, thrift stores, apartment complexes, and public playgrounds.
Also, be sure you have your own single moms ministry page on your church’s website with thorough information about your ministry and a contact person with their name, email and picture. Make sure this page is professionally done.
Meet – Now it is time for your single moms to get together. According to Jennifer Maggio, founder of The Life of a Single Mom, single moms are usually very busy on weekdays, so weekends are best for meeting times. Be sure to provide childcare for your meeting.
Your meetings should enable single moms to relate with and make friends with other single moms, provide excellent spiritual input, and be chock full of advice, wisdom, and resources for them to utilize.
Provide Resources – Thoroughly research available resources in your church and community for single moms. Make these resources available on handouts at your meetings.
Serve – Many church men’s ministries provide oil and oil filter changes once or twice a year. Some men’s ministries inventory the skills of their men and then, when a single mom contacts the church with a need for something to be fixed in her home, the church contacts the man with the matching skill. I call oil change and skills inventory ministries project ministries.
The goal of New Commandment Men’s Ministries is to help church men’s groups get beyond project ministry into relational ministry by training churches how to provide teams of 3-4 men to single moms. These men serve around their care receiver’s residence for two hours one Saturday morning every month, returning each month to the same care receiver for years long service.
In the end, we want to see unchurched single moms finding Jesus Christ as their savior and growing in their newfound faith with confidence and hope. We also want to see Christian single moms loved and accepted in the church for the amazing women that they are. And we want to see all single moms realizing that they may have lost a man in their home, but they have gained in their church a family that truly loves them with the love of Christ.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry
Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church here.
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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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