On this page you will find three things: 1. Things to put into practice to make TLC Ministry a success. 2. The members of your TLC Team. 3. The wonderful folks that your TLC Team is currently engaged in encouraging. Phase One - Making Contact: Weekly Progression of your TLC team: All TLC members meet together, (example date: January 7, 2007, 4 PM) @ the church building. Week #1 (example date: Jan 17) A week full of prayer Week #2 (example date: Jan 24) Prayer & Send a card Week #3 (example date: Jan 31) Prayer & Phone call Week #4 (example date: Feb 7) Prayer & Visit 15 minutes at door (maybe a small gift) Week #5 (example date: Feb 14) Prayer & Dinner at your home Week #6 (example date: Feb 21) Prayer & Worship & Church Dinner ("Day of Repentance, Renewal & Refreshing") Phase Two - Making Disciples: Discovering their needs and meeting those needs (Emotional, Physcial, Financial & Spiritual): Emotional Needs: Allow those you are serving to define their emotional needs. It is not our place to define emotional needs. Do not judge their needs. Try to understand and meet their needs or find someone who can. Try to do this work as a team of at least two people. This allows for courage, strength in numbers, and keeps everything on the up and up -- Integrity is key here. Integrity as a team, as Christ's servants and integrity in ministrering to others in the eye of the community. Physical Needs: The physcial needs that Jesus expects us to meet for others are those needs which others can not meet for themselves. If someone is not willing to work, then they might not eat. However, if they are unable to work, we are commanded to help meet their need. This can be a tough call sometimes. Initially your team might decide to help meet a need and later have to make a different decision to allow someone to go to work for thier own selves. We are here to help people live their lives, not to live their lives for them. You will probably have to work closely together with one another in this area. Financial Needs: The are usually plenty of organizations, including the church, that can be a wonderful resource for this particular need. Contact your evangelist or Elders & Deacons or Benevolent Ministry to assist you in meeting this need if you feel so led. Also, there may be some financial videos available for helping meet this need. Everyone is far better off if we teach someone to fish, to manage their fish, than to always do their fishing for them. Spiritual Needs: Initially some people may need to be encouraged that, despite their failures in life, God still dearly loves them. You may find yourself encouraging a long lost brother, or you may find yourself telling someone for the first time that God loves them. In either case you are meeting their spiritual needs. Listen to their story. Hear their pain, understand their pain as much as possible. Don't try to fix them. Rather listen to them. This may take a moment or it may take months. In either case you will begin to win their confidence in you as a friend and a servant of God. It is likely that you will become life-long friends. In the process you will lead them to the Captain of our souls -- Jesus. If you need help in this area contact your TLC team leaders and speak to them about how your ministry is going in helping lead people to the Lord. If you need assistance in making a visit, invite your elders or evangelist along. If you need any materials for encouragement for yourself, those you are ministering to, or anything else let your leadership know and by all means keep you TLC team leaders informed so they can be ready to encourage you in your good and holy work. Include them in our church life of living, loving, leading and just hanging out being part of our wonderful church family. As the relationships develop be sensitive to how comfortable people are in wanting to be drawn into the church core group. While some folks will want to be drawn in closer within a few weeks, other may take several months or even years. Keep the contact going at a pace that they feel comfortable. Don't give up because they are not moving at a pace that is quick as your own. Slow down or speed up your development of the relationship according to what makes them (not you) comfortable. Trust that the Lord is in your midst and that the Spirit of God is convicting them. Finally begin to encourage them with respect to their gifts and talents in allowing for God's calling of their unique gifts to be exercised in our midst. (This usually follows thier obedience in baptism to Christ) While God has called his shepherds and his evangelists to lead his people in discovering their various gifts and talents, it is an area that we all can be sensitive towards. So keep the lines of communication open with the elders and the evangelist if you beileve you may have discovered or helped someone discover what their talent, ability or gift may be. Actually a lot of the discovery process can be just trying out new things. Try it, or encourage those folks your working with to try some Christian service -- if it does not fit, there is no shame in trying (only in not trying anything). Once in a while someone will think they know what their gift is. This is usually rare, and sometimes later revealed that such was not the case. But encourage them to try it by hooking them up with a brother or sister that is already ministrering in that area successfully. Again keep the elders and the evangelist informed. You can best do this by getting the word out to your TLC team leaders. Every one of counts, everyone matters, everyone has a gift, if we don't know what it is, we are in the process of discovering it! Phase Three - Make It All Happen Again!: Simply repeating what works over and over again, only each time enlisting those new babes in Christ to help do it with us. As our teams grow over sixteen adults (eight couples) we begin new teams to reach out into the community. As we bring new folks to Christ, the new folks will have many new contacts that we will want to get to know. And so on, and so on, you get the idea! Remember to always stay in regular touch with your TLC Team Leaders so they can meet your needs and know how to pray for and serve you as you serve others. Blessings to you and yours. -- Keith |