Someone asked me a while back why I don’t write more about specific care receivers in my ministry. There are two reasons.
First of all, as a consultant, I’ve helped hundreds of churches start men’s team ministries to their widowed and single parents. There are now several thousand care receivers being served around the world. But because I don’t work directly with their widowed and single parents, I rarely get to meet or hear from them. Most don’t even know I exist.
The second reason is that, while the church I attend, Crossroads Church in Northglenn, Colorado, has a men’s team ministry and I lead that ministry on a volunteer basis, I hesitate to write about our care receivers lest I violate their privacy.
On the other hand, I’ve decided that it may be an encouragement to my readers to describe our men’s team ministry at Crossroads in general terms.
“Faithful Hands,” as we call our ministry, started fifteen years ago with twelve men, three teams, and three care receivers. Crossroads was the first church in the US with over 1,000 in attendance to start this ministry. We now have eighteen teams and almost seventy men who serve about twenty-five care receivers and their children. Many of these teams have been serving their care receiver for over ten years now.
Here are some examples of the types of people we serve:
- A widower and retired pastor
- Several widows
- A widow and single mom
- Other single moms
- Single moms who care for disabled children
- A young adult woman who cares for her disabled mother and her brother
I can say, along with all of our men in Faithful Hands, that serving our care receivers on a team has been one of the great blessings of my life.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
_______________________________________________________________
Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
_______________________________________________________________
